“School days, school days. Good old fashioned rule days. Reading and writing and arithmetic … oops. Stop right there! The education Gods have spoken again. Or is it the Gods of technology?

Whatever it is, it looks like good ol' fashioned “writing” is on the way out as at least one state in the Excited States of America has decreed that cursive writing will no longer be taught in state public schools. This was the decree issued by Indiana education officials April 25 for the school year beginning this fall. No more oval ‘o's' and slanting ‘t's' in the Hoosier State. From now on they'll stick to corn and basketball.

Kidding aside, it does make you wonder what's next – reading? ‘rithmetic?, science? history? art? music? It's all on the Internet, isn't it? Perhaps in the classroom of the future, the kids will just drop their smart phones and iPods off at the door and some sort of digital, super-brain machine will beam electro-magnetic waves out to the devices in front of it and voila! that will be “education” while the kids do important things like texting each other on their smart phones or playing war games on their Nintendos.

Brave New World, here we come!

In handing down its decision, the Indiana State board of Education said elementary school teachers would still be allowed to teach cursive writing as a “local standard,” but emphasized keyboard proficiency should be taught first. Cursive writing was referred to as an “archaic method,” which caused some critics to wonder if the students of the future will even be able to sign their names or know what a signature is for that matter.

Other points come to mind as well. For instance, some employers request hand-written cover letters presumably because they see some value in examining a prospective employee's handwriting. Neat, legible cursive writing is an indicator of character, intelligence and reliability, traits valued by employers. In Victorian times, legible, cursive handwriting was regarded as an unfailing sign of a “gentleman,” something in the computer age that we really don't value anymore, but maybe we should. And, despite the computer, handwriting analysis still plays an important role in forensic crime investigation.

Certainly in an age of texting, emailing and the like, good clear handwriting is not as important as it used to be but it's a little early yet to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You might expect this coming from a reporter, but don't underestimate the value of plain, old paper. If you want to leave a note for someone, paper is the obvious medium. You're not going to leave your cell phone somewhere for them to read the message on it. A post-it note will do quite nicely and it's a lot cheaper. We may live in an age of computers, but contrary to what was predicted, we seem to be using paper more than ever, and as long as paper is around, the ability to write legibly on it will be needed.

Doctors, nurses and lawyers all take notes on paper. So do businessmen, scientists and stockbrokers for that matter. The need to record accurate information and to express yourself on paper is not going away anytime soon. The educational establishment, fad-prone as it is, should take note of that (preferably on paper) before it consigns cursive writing to the trash bin of educational history.

Electronic information taking is fine and it's certainly fast. But think of the number of times a computer has crashed on you. Smart phones are great too, but I couldn't count the number of times I've been half-way through an interview on a cell phone and I get the anguished cry that the battery is running out and there's another interview cut short.

The written word has always had value and I have no doubt it always will. And I'm not alone in feeling this way.

This is what poet Sylvia Plath said about writing: “Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise.” Or “Quote Garden.” author Terri Guillemets: “Ink on paper is as beautiful to me as flowers on the mountain. God composes. Why shouldn't we?”

Surely composing our thoughts is something too important to be left solely to the computer?