Print or Cursive?

Lately, several commercials depict children as young as four completing complicated tasks on the computer quickly. Visual images of babies with pacifiers in their mouths and tiny fingers on the computer run through my mind.
Will that affect handwriting and reading for coming generations? It already has.
Many schools today no longer teach cursive writing. School officials cite several reasons for this. First of all, children jump from learning the alphabet to the computer. Why teach a different style of writing when most everything is done on the computer? There is no reason to teach cursive, they say. Print is easier to read. We all know this to be true.
I had rather my child learn to print well than to learn to print and write cursive barely legible. That makes sense to me.
But here is where I have the problem. Many personal and historical documents are in cursive. If we don’t teach our children to write or read cursive, they will not be able to read important documents such as the Declaration of Independence. They will not even be able to read a letter from Great-grandmother to grandmother. Perhaps we are just a generation or two away from cursive writing being offered as an elective in art or as a foreign language.
It’s not that crazy.
I have checked with friends from other areas, teachers and other contacts and found that cursive is not being taught. In one instance I talked with a parent whose child never learned cursive. The elementary-aged child learned two different styles of printing in two years. This totally confused the student and parents. I was confused, as well, as I didn’t understand the point in teaching two types of printing.
With each generation comes change. The changes can be good. Learning to print is important. Adapting to accommodate to the computer-literate generation is a must. But we need to make sure our children will be able to read historical documents and letters from their family members already gone. These are things that help shape their future.