What's different about German cursive? I live in a German-speaking country now and I haven't really noticed any defining differences where I am, though I also wasn't looking for them.
Throwaway ballpoint pens seem to be the norm at least in university settings here, in my experience.
The other problem with the American approach is that you are never taught the proper motion patterns ("Arkaden und Girlanden", anyone?) that cursive handwriting consists of. You are expected to write properly but aren't given the tooling.
That's funny I kind of developed to writing in Ausgangsschrift naturally having been taught the more florid US style of US cursive. It's basically just connecting the normal print version of the characters so you don't have to lift the pen. Mine's more of a mutt though since it basically came out of just writing in print without lifting my pen as school demanded faster note taking.
I learned how to write in Kurrent a year ago or so. I'm not quite up to speed with it, but it looks nice, and I think it has the potential to be faster than British/American cursive styles.
In the 90s most schools still taught cursive, but the US is big, so your school might have been an exception.
> In a 2007 survey of 200 teachers of first through third grades in all 50 American states, 90 percent of respondents said their schools required the teaching of cursive.
Working in an international school, I find that my German students routinely have the best formed handwriting of all. Many use Lamy pens. Chinese writing (in English) is easy to read, since they don't usually do joined up writing, and craft each letter.
Throwaway ballpoint pens seem to be the norm at least in university settings here, in my experience.