LOS ANGELES – Those who followed the George Zimmerman trial closely probably remember Rachel Jeantel, the witness who couldn’t read a letter she had written – with the help of a friend – because it was written in cursive handwriting.

It was an awkward moment for Jeantel, but the high school student is hardly alone in her inability to read or write in cursive.

Many states have stopped – or will soon stop – instructing students in the flowing-style of handwriting because it’s not required under the new Common Core learning standards.

MORE NEWS: Know These Before Moving From Cyprus To The UK

Common Core’s new, nationalized English standards, which are being implemented in 45 states, focus instead “on analytical and computer-based skills,” reports the L.A. Times.

The paper adds that Common Core doesn’t forbid schools from teaching cursive writing, and some states – including California – are keeping the practice in their curriculum. (Under the rules of Common Core, states are generously allowed to make a limited number of additions to the learning standards.)

The L.A. Times editorial board believes the demise of cursive writing is long overdue:

“When society adds new skills and new knowledge to the list of things public schools teach, some other items have to come off the list. Otherwise, the result is a curriculum that is a mile wide and an inch deep, as California’s has famously been. Cursive might be one skill that can be painlessly dropped to make way for new ones.”

Historian David Barton doesn’t share the enthusiasm over the disappearance of cursive writing instruction, which is one of the reasons he believes Common Core poses “serious problems for the future of the Republic.”

Barton explains that children who aren’t taught cursive handwriting will grow into adults who can’t read the nation’s founding documents, papers and letters – virtually all of which are written in cursive, according to TheBlaze.com.

MORE NEWS: How to prepare for face-to-face classes

That will make the upcoming generations of Americans dependent on the so-called experts to tell them what their nation’s founders believed, according to Barton.

Barton makes a good point. Too many Americans are already historically illiterate. What will happen if the next generation of American leaders can’t read for themselves the primary source documents (letters, diaries and legal papers) that shaped our national identity, heritage and values?

That doesn’t sound like a country in which many traditional-minded Americans would want to live in.

On the other hand, it probably sounds like utopian conditions for the progressives and activist teachers who are working to fundamentally transform this county.