Does cursive matter?

DOES CURSIVE MATTER? Graham Beck writes:

The litany of moral, practical, and cultural worries surrounding the fall of cursive script reflects a few basic assumptions about handwriting that confuse much of the form’s complicated past. The worries also cast a telling light on our own particular fears about the future, which may or may not include an electricity-less, memory-deficient world, where poorly understood documents are ratified with iterations of a droolingly scrawled X. But before we start stockpiling pens and manuscript-ruled paper, let’s look back a bit and take a deep breath, because handwriting hasn’t always been the sort of sign that it is today. 

Long before schools in this country stopped teaching cursive, most didn’t teach writing at all. Though reading, which afforded colonists direct access to the scriptures, was a crucial part of the education of children in 17th- and 18th-century America, writing, as well as the ability to read handwritten documents, was a rare skill reserved for the wealthiest boys and girls, as well as for young men with accountant’s dreams or aspirations for the itch of a barrister’s wig. 

This is particularly interesting, given that I'm currently in the process of learning myself, albeit a little later than would be considered ideal. I felt, though, that the handwriting I had until recently relied upon simply wasn't doing it (to use an annoying phrase); I felt its messiness imposed a feeling of lesser quality on my work. Petty, I know. The danger is that I now spend my time in math class practicing cursive, much to my teacher's dismay – Lord knows how much time I've wasted. Perhaps one day I'll calculate an approximate measure of time wasted, but that's math, and I'd rather be practicing cursive.