[reaperducer]

Are people who were forced to learn cursive smarter?

By definition, people who know more things are smarter than people who know fewer things. That's just how it works.

For centuries, people have striven to improve themselves through the acquisition of knowledge and skills. It is a quirk of recent generations that so many members take pride in their lack of knowledge.

I'm repeatedly bewildered by my Millennial colleagues who proudly say "I don't know what that means," or boast "I don't know what that is" with no sense of shame.

[margalabargala]

I may be able to help with that bewilderment.

Imagine, you have two people. Person A knows cursive, person B does not. Person B knows the ins and outs of Newtonian physics, person A does not.

Which person is smarter? Which person would the cursive test say is smarter?

What you seem to have mistook for people not knowing things without shame, is people valuing knowledge not by the preponderance of its quantity but by its total when multiplied by its utility.

Otherwise I do not envy the shame you must feel at lacking the knowledge of which plants are edible, how to.clean a carcass, how to fashion a needle from bone and an axe from stone, the mixture of clays to use to make your bricks, and all manner of other once-necessary tidbits whose usefulness has lapsed for the general population.

[reaperducer]

The person who knows cursive can go on to learn Newtonian physics. Now he knows two things. While your supposed hero still only knows one.

[margalabargala]

The person who knows physics can go on to learn cursive, should they choose. "Knowing cursive" is not specially indicative of one's intelligence.

[igregoryca]

Once upon a time, I thought I wanted to learn cursive handwriting. Except this version of me was already in his 20s, would be out of school in a matter of months, and quickly realized the skill would be of such marginal utility in the future that it wasn't worth the hours spent tracing out giant letters like a kindergartener every day.

One could learn this skill in their 20s or beyond, but there's an opportunity cost – why not something else that would actually improve work performance, or that you enjoy doing?

I still wish I'd been taught in elementary school, though, because it would've been really useful as a student. Some of our teachers discreetly handed out practice booklets to students who'd "expressed interest" (their parents taught them the basics and teacher noticed); most of us were not so lucky.

[LtWorf]

So what did you learn instead of cursive?

[xboxnolifes]

I'm not sure the definition of smart is so clear cut. If anything, that falls closer under the definition of knowledgeable.