Hip Hop encompasses music (rap), dance (breaking/popping), and art (graffiti). There’s nothing else like it that I can think of; what does a Jazz musician paint or draw? How does an Abstract Expressionist sing?

This article in NY Times gets it wrong. It doesn’t consider that making letters is a form of human expression. I would wager that many graffiti artists were taught cursive in their early years, or at least were inspired by distinctive typeface classifications.

Learning cursive was instrumental in my love of typography. It revealed underlying form of language. I was obsessed with how an s could connect to a t, or how the way letters were drawn could imprint an emotion on the word, making it happy or angry or scary.

Handwriting skills are the same as music or dance skills, and best introduced at a young age.