Interestingly I had the opposite journey, I am a Young so they didn't bother to teach me cursive in school, so in high school when I got into fountain pens I taught myself italic hand so that my handwriting would be more legible and easier to write with it -- but just recently I got tired of the two-stroke 'e' and taught myself Zaner-Bloser instead, lol. I do definitely see the drawbacks you mentioned though, after I started getting more casual with my writing I noticed 'l's and 'e's becoming quickly indistinguishable
Illinois still requires cursive as part of their elementary education curriculum (although it’s an outlier in that it also requires PE in every year of K-12 education and also for public university degrees¹ (maybe also private?) as well as speech in both high school and again for a public university degree.
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1. Typically this would only apply or a bachelor’s and maybe associate’s degree, but when I got my teaching credential/MS, because I had an out of state private college BA, I had to take undergraduate courses for state requirements including US Government, Biology, Speech and 2 PE classes. An ancient AP test score spared me having to take US History.
