My grandmother sends me a “Happy Birthday” card with the typical well-wishes and a $20 tucked inside every year. As a child, I remember squinting in confusion and re-reading her loopy handwriting to understand her message. Eventually, I would hand the card to my parents and ask them to “translate” her old-school handwriting. Similarly, in middle school, my teacher would hold a “cursive competition” in which my classmates and I were required to write a passage from a book in cursive under a time limit. In the end, we would vote for who had the best and worst cursive handwriting. Despite the game’s ridiculousness, it wasn’t surprising when my handwriting was chosen as the worst since I was only taught to print.
However, I’m not the only one in my generation unfamiliar with reading and writing in cursive. In 2010, Common Core — a new educational model outlining academic standards for K-12 mathematics and English — officially pushed out cursive instruction in primary schools. Instead, Common Core focused on “keyboarding skills” over handwriting. One standard, for example, expected fourth graders to “type a minimum of one page in a single sitting.” Due to this shift, many members of Gen Z don’t know cursive. The only cursive instruction I received was a 10-page packet at the beginning of second grade.
A new California law, Assembly Bill 446, will reintroduce the “dying art” of cursive alongside core subjects, such as mathematics and English, for first through sixth graders. Amending the “Educational Code,” the state-mandated program’s purpose is to “include knowledge of, and appreciation for, literature and the language, as well as skills of speaking, reading, listening, spelling, handwriting and composition.” Although many are concerned about adapting to the digital age in education, cursive handwriting is an important skill for students to learn as it has many cognitive benefits and connects the present and past.
For instance, it is faster to write in cursive because it does not require stop-and-start strokes of writing in print and allows students to read more words fluidly. This increases reading and writing speed, which encourages longer attention spans for students. Additionally, research shows cursive writing improves brain development as important neural connections are formed in areas of critical thinking, language and memory. Cursive stimulates the brain synapses of the left and right hemispheres and builds neural pathways that improve the retention of information. Other benefits of cursive handwriting include improved fine motor skills, fewer “letter reversals” for students with dyslexia, better spelling and increased memorization.
Most importantly, cursive handwriting connects the past with the present. The absence of cursive instruction limits students’ ability to review primary sources and historical documents containing essential facts. A first-hand understanding of meaningful information in handwritten letters, manuscripts and other such sources is at risk of being lost if new generations can’t read them. Thus, cursive handwriting instruction in schools enables students to feel closer to history and gain a deeper understanding of it.
Individual handwriting also demonstrates personality traits. Each person’s penmanship reveals unique stylistic strokes and patterns. My grandma’s neat, traditional cursive handwriting and my larger, bubbly handwriting represent our different personalities and feelings in a way that typing on a computer cannot. Though keyboarding is an essential skill in the digital age, cursive handwriting is a skill that should not be overlooked or lost.
