From a Cracked article:
Why It's Inefficient:
There's a reason nobody can read your
goddamn signature -- cursive is hard to read.
Many colleges forbid students from turning in
exams written in cursive and present lectures via
PowerPoint, not pretty P's and looping L's. Some
say writing in cursive can help brain
development, but so can printing. Also, kids can
type far faster than they can write in cursive,
and they can work on their grammar, syntax,
spelling and idea flow much more efficiently on
a computer than they can with a quill pen and
parchment.
But the main argument against cursive comes
down simply to an allocation of classroom
resources. If you somehow already know cursive,
fine, but in these days of stretched school
budgets and limited teaching time, some
wonder whether we should really be devoting
school resources to the world's stupidest way of
putting words on paper.
Yet 90 percent of schools are still spending the
recommended 60 weekly minutes teaching their
second- and third-graders cursive. If that hour is
going in, what are we sacrificing? Math? Cultural
diversity? Phys ed? Our fat, racist, counting-on-
their-fingers kids don't need to know how to
make flowery Z's. Or at least, they need to know
a lot of other things more.