Parents: Can your millennial child sign his/her name?

Yes, it is lovely that they stopped teaching them that time wasting calligraphy and maybe taught them something actually useful like keyboarding.

Yes.

Very early Millennial ('81). Not only can I sign my name, I can sign the name of several college friends and roommates who were in the habit of making me go to the door to get the pizza. :smiley: Seriously, though. I have a cursive scrawl. It goes on IDs and the odd receipt. It’s actually a bit fancy, because I decided I wanted it to be. No one has ever looked at it. I could draw a duck for all they care. The last time I “signed” a lease, it was electronically via Adobe DocuSign.

One writes beautifully in cursive: born 1997. The other can barely print legibly: born 1999.

My 5 year old is not a millennial, having missed any reasonable cut off by over 10 years and being the child of two millennials. However, he just started kindergarten and his class has about 10 iPads for the 20 kids to share.

I think it’s very lovely that they’re introducing the kids to technology young and are weeding out wasteful topics like cursive. My millennial era experience with computers in school included playing number munchers on the one computer in the classroom.

I learned cursive during WWII, when we dipped nib pens into inkwells, but I can’t do it any more. In my 20s, I started printing everything in block capitals, and I doubt if today I could write anything legible in cursive. My signature is just a messy line, but with fairly consistent messiness from one check to another.

I have a friend whose signature is his initials. Dumb idea, though, as he’s gotten in so many arguements with clerks, who have to call the manager over…

17 and 18 - both write cursive. Both sign in some sort of connected scrawl.

My 27 year old has beautiful handwriting. They taught d’nealian and cursive when she was in school. They don’t teach it at all that I can see in my 11 year old’s school. They may have had a few lessons in third or fourth grade but I never saw any of the work. She prints her name with loops and attaches it all but it’s not really formal cursive.

I just don’t see how it’s really that important anymore except for historical purposes. Taking notes by hand? Seems like it would be more practical to teach shorthand for that. It’s pretty, sure. Maybe make it part of art class?

The clerks are the ones who are dumb, not he.

Fighting ignorance is not a dumb idea, even if it fights back. Sometimes, it’s an expensive idea (in this case, expensive of time and annoyance). And maybe it’s not a wise idea in specific situations, for that reason.

But if fighting ignorance is a dumb idea, why are any of us here?

Yea, older Millenial, I can write and sign in cursive. If I have to handwrite, it’ll be in cursive, it is faster for me than block writing.

I was also taught typing in my primary school, which resulted in being in the minority, when I reached high school and had to type reports for class, that could do so with both hands instead of pecking keys.

I can see, if time is pressing, ditching cursive for typewriting, but they were two different classes, taught by different people, so I find it weird that one would have to mean the other one not being taught. Handwriting was integrated with the language classes, and students were expected to be writing in cursive (at least their exams) after a certain grade level. Typing was the domain of the computer class.

Ditto. If I’m really feeling dedicated that day, I make the “h” midway through my last name stand out.