When I was in highschool, I wrote a paper on how education lags far behind technology and modern era. In modern era, people write emails, type via messengers/sms, and use digital means of communication. Rarely is hand-written considered normal in any situations where transcribing is necessary.
Even with maths, people don't hand calculate large, long, complex equations. We use computers, calculators, and technology to accomplish it with far greater accuracy/reliability and speed. Simple arithmetic is useful to learn to do in your head, but to solve a²+b²=c², you can just google up a Pythagorean calculator. My point is that it's useful to know to find/use the tools to solve problems, not how to to solve by hand. This didn't exist 20 years ago, but it does today, and schools should teach for a modern and future era. It does no good to teach the youth archaic ways of the old which aren't in use anymore. If the parents believe it's important, then it should be taught by the parents to preserve a culture or value they believe in. But schools should spend time to functionally educate.
Cursive is just one of those things that has been replaced by technology, for most it is much faster to type than it is to write, and the advantage cursive has over manuscript is that it was faster. Well, keyboards are faster than cursive, and print is more simple and clean looking in manuscript than cursive on a display using a font.
I think regardless of the year we're in, kids should still learn the fundamentals, because once we're gone and only the kids that didn't learn the fundamentals are left, how will they know if the result that Google gives them when they Google any equation like Pythagorean theorem are correct? How would they know to even question and doubt Google? So much of programming, mathematics and engineering that we (or at least I) do, is just auto checked by how you feel, because pretty much always you have an idea of what the result should look like, not the exact numbers but you have the idea. I'm sure you know what I mean, even when writing a code you know what to expect and if the result is an error you quite often know what's wrong before you finish reading the error message.
Intuition
I think way too often to people fall into the trap of looking at the world through their eyes instead of through eyes of someone who doesn't have that knowledge.
Even now, I know what PI looks like, but I have no idea how to actually calculate it. I know that I get a very rough approximation with 22/7, but I don't know how to actually calculate it. I know what it is and what it represents in the real world so I would at least know where to start my research.
Sure, cursive might not look that important because you can still just write it non-cursive. But it kind of feels like the first step towards no hand writing. Then what? There a prolonged power outage and you're tasked with getting the supplies. Now you've always just used you're phone to make a shopping list and you never really learn the write, because that's what the dusty people of old did. You can recognise the letters but you don't actually know or remember how to write them...
I have that same feeling with Hiragana/Katakana/Kanji, I can recognise them and read them more or less without a problem, but if you tell me to write E in Hiragana then in lost, just because I almost never practiced writing any of these.
Humanity should really quite a book - The Human Manual. Which would include all the fundamental knowledge that every human should know. From how to grow food, how often should you wash your body, what common wild plants, mushrooms and animals are edible across the globe to what compound interest is and how it works. A book with which the modern civilisation could be restarted if it ever collapsed.
I fear that not learning cursive is just the shadow of a monster that we can't even comprehend.
Even with maths, people don't hand calculate large, long, complex equations. We use computers, calculators, and technology to accomplish it with far greater accuracy/reliability and speed. Simple arithmetic is useful to learn to do in your head, but to solve a²+b²=c², you can just google up a Pythagorean calculator. My point is that it's useful to know to find/use the tools to solve problems, not how to to solve by hand. This didn't exist 20 years ago, but it does today, and schools should teach for a modern and future era. It does no good to teach the youth archaic ways of the old which aren't in use anymore. If the parents believe it's important, then it should be taught by the parents to preserve a culture or value they believe in. But schools should spend time to functionally educate.
Cursive is just one of those things that has been replaced by technology, for most it is much faster to type than it is to write, and the advantage cursive has over manuscript is that it was faster. Well, keyboards are faster than cursive, and print is more simple and clean looking in manuscript than cursive on a display using a font.