I was taught cursive in 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade... and it hurts my hand, and looks terrible, so I don't do that. My usual writing is a modified drafter's font.
Of course, I also had a Newton MP2000 (later upgraded to 2100) that I used in labs to input data to the native spreadsheet program, imported the resulting graphs into the native word processor for the writeup, and stopped by on the way back to the dorm to print it out wirelessly, all before anyone else sat down at their computers. That felt like magic.
Depends on the school.
Low-end public school? Probably not. But private schools, and my nephew's Catholic school do.
I've never understood the internet's hate for cursive. Are people who don't learn cursive not able to read the first line of a California license plate, or locate a Walgreen's pharmacy?
It's sort of an outdated mode of writing that survived due to inertia. Cursive is super, super useful when your writing tool can't withstand repeat impacts against the writing medium -- like a quill -- or if lifting will cause your writing tool to leak against the medium. Theoretically it's also faster to write than block characters, but the speed differences appear to be minimal for short-duration writing with the benefit of uniformity of block characters _outside_ of cultures that stress uniformity of cursive lettering. Worth pointing out that the examples you give here are not especially stylized letters and that Walgreens, outside of its red cursive letter logo, generally prefers a sans-serif block lettering. That said, I'm sure for someone not familiar with cursive lettering the 'r' and 's' look especially inscrutable, but most humans tolerate unreadable characters pretty well when scanning words we already know.
The slow death of cursive is indicative of the change in medium: most people write to one another by computer, or on mechanically printed paper. It's a similar process by which we started adding vowels, spaces and punctuation: the constraints of the medium or its tools improved with time.
In my experience it is much more comfortable to write cursive. You do not have to lift the pen for every single letter. It is quite annoying to have to do that, quite honestly. My hand feels much more happier to be able to just follow a flow.
I also do not understand the hate, it is much more comfortable. It is like hating touch typing. Sure, you can type with two fingers but not very efficiently.
To each their own I guess.
The hate stems from when we were taught it (poorly) in elementary school, where it was slower, physically painful and the result was illegible.
Now I go weeks between writing anything physically at all (and even most of that is Kanji now as I moved to Japan) so learning a new way of writing seems pointless
Cursive is unrelated to quills and ink. Quills and ink existed for a thousand years before cursive was invented.
Cursive exists to relive the strain of writing a lot. Printing is much harder on the hands that cursive. If cursive hurts when you write, you're doing it wrong. You're supposed to hold the implement very loosely and gently, not like you're holding on for dear life.
the 'r' and 's' look especially inscrutable
The cursive "r" is an "r" with a bit on the right linking to the next letter.
The cursive "s" is an "s" with a bit on the left linking it to the previous letter.
The forms have evolved over the centuries, but they're still there. Even the weird capital F makes sense if you write it enough times. It's an "F" made without lifting the pen.
I went to public school early in life, and so didn't learn cursive. When I joined a private school, everyone was already writing cursive, and I had to catch up. It took me maybe three weeks. I remember getting g and q was hard for me. But people are able to learn new things every day.
I don't think anyone suggested otherwise?
I think the conversation might be slightly hung up on the specific example of a quill (reed stylus, sharpened bird bone, charcoal stick, brush all encourage a flowing character), nor is the only reason to prefer cursive writing to relieve hand strain, although that's true for informal long-form and for some hands and for some alphabets. My general point here is that the medium of writing tends to dictate the common forms of writing and with the common medium now being mechanical -- computer, printer etc -- we're seeing a shift in how people form their characters, if they even form them by hand at all.
I definitely find writing a nicer experience with a pencil, a fountain pen, or a felt-tipped pen - ballpoints require too much pressure to be comfortable.
Isn't the whole point to handwrite faster, which people don't even do anymore? I for one didn't write fast in cursive so even that's not true.
On the other hand it's harder to read, harder to OCR.
Given text is read way more than it is written, the choice is clear.
I even went through a period where I used the “long s” in my script, and I was able to get that to OCR just fine after some training.