Cursive is back. But should students be learning the skill?

npr ^

[algore]

Cursive has been on the upswing for years now. More than two dozen states now require cursive instruction in schools after the 2010 Common Core standards omitted the skill.

Kenerson, a multilingual teacher at Holmes, started the middle school cursive club when students couldn't read her writing on the board. They just stared at her blankly, she said.

"I realized they didn't know how to write or read in cursive," Kenerson said. For an educator who firmly believes that quotes deserve to be written in cursive, and has a new one on her board each month, Kenerson wanted to give students a chance to understand the magic of the loopy writing.

Kenerson's after-school club is a local example of a nationwide trend — cursive handwriting is back in many classrooms across the country. Teachers and legislators credit the resurgence to nostalgia and some evidence of educational benefits. But surprisingly, the curves and swoops are contentious among experts, and some argue that cursive does not add any real value for students

Much of the cursive debate centers around time in the classroom. Should educators spend precious minutes teaching another way to write on paper when technology is so prevalent?

"I have seen no evidence that cursive brings any particular cognitive or learning benefit beyond that brought by hand printing," wrote Mark Warschauer, a professor of education at the University of California, Irvine

Warschauer, who founded the UC Irvine Digital Learning Lab, opposes teaching cursive in schools because of the "waste of time and effort" when print handwriting, voice-to-text applications, and keyboards are easily accessible to students.

Back in Kenerson's cursive club, 11-year-old Conrad Thompson said she's the only student in her history class who can read her teacher's huge Declaration of Independence printout. It makes her proud.

[dinodino]

I had hoped that NPR would be kaput by now.

[SharpenedEdge]

Absolutely. To deny the need to nurture refinement and culture in education is to descend into barbarism. Schools should not be mindless drone factories. They should be centers of cultural enrichment.

Teach the little snots to write properly.

[Georgia Girl 2]

Yes!

[fishtank]

Check out the difference between printed Russian and cursive Russian….

[MinorityRepublican]

Cursive should be taught and practiced in grades 1-6 as much as for training brain-eye-hand coordination. Call it PE then if you don’t want to call it literacy.

Or art. Calligraphy.

[fidelis]

Yes they should. Warning: It’s a long article. Which I admit to just browsing through,

“The Importance of Cursive Handwriting Over Typewriting for Learning in the Classroom: A High-Density EEG Study of 12-Year-Old Children and Young Adults”
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7399101/

ChatGPT summary:

🧠 Summary of the study (PMC7399101)

Title: The Importance of Cursive Handwriting Over Typewriting for Learning in the Classroom

🔍 Main question

The study investigates whether handwriting, typing, or drawing is most effective for learning, especially as digital devices replace traditional writing.

🧪 What the researchers did

Used brain scans (EEG) on:

12 adults

12 children (around age 12)

Participants performed three tasks:

Writing by hand (cursive)

Typing on a keyboard

Drawing words

They then compared brain activity patterns across these tasks.

🧠 Key findings

Handwriting and drawing:

Produced strong, synchronized brain activity in areas linked to:

Memory

Learning

Involved multiple senses and motor skills (movement, vision, touch)

Typing:

Produced weaker and less coordinated brain activity

Lacked the same patterns associated with effective learning

👉 In simple terms:

Writing by hand activates the brain in a way that is better suited for learning and remembering.

💡 Why handwriting helps learning

The study suggests handwriting is beneficial because it:

Combines motor movement + visual processing + thinking

Requires fine, precise control, which strengthens brain connections

Creates richer “mental encoding” of information

Typing, by contrast, is more repetitive and less cognitively engaging.

🧒 Implications for education

Children should learn and practice handwriting early

Schools should not fully replace handwriting with typing

Both skills are useful:

✍️ Handwriting → better for learning and memory

⌨️ Typing → better for speed and longer text production

🧾 Bottom line

Handwriting (especially cursive) plays an important role in brain development and learning, and replacing it entirely with typing could negatively affect how well students process and remember information.

[Reily]

I think I said that!

[Reily]

Well said!

[Magnum44]

[fidelis]

[lee martell]

I support having the kids learn cursive, for, if nothing else a way to make them drop their phones for a little while and concentrate on producing work manually.

I would be even more interested in a renewed focus on general learning of academics, pre-algebra, World and American history, spelling, writing in complete sentences w/o using the word “AMAZING!!” every third statement.

It takes a certain kind of teacher to teach history without it becoming a biased political soapbox, ‘snooze-fest’ or nothing more than an exercise in rote memory.

[V_TWIN]

When I was in elementary school a million years ago, cursive was taught beginning in 3rd grade.

57 years later I still vividly remember sitting at the kitchen table whining about not being able to do it....only to be met by my mom’s reply “your not leaving the table until you show me you can”.

A very valuable life lesson was learned that day.

That being when presented with something I don’t like but have to do, just sack up, bite down and get it over with.

Gotten me through countless experiences all through my life.

Whoever this guy is saying there’s no benefit suffers from an anal cranial inversion.

[lastchance]

Thanks, I would not have known to do that. Much appreciated.

[PGR88]

Recieved a Christmas card from my 97 year-old aunt

Her handwriting was simply beautiful. She had both a very steady hand for such an old person, and her training from 1930s (public) school and constant practice produced something like a work of art.

Do children now need to learn it? YES. It connects thoughts, to deliberate speech and physical action.

But even MORE important IMHO - schools need to bring back the old classes of RHETORIC - grammar, syntax, logic, and classical tools of forming an argument, and persuasion

[hinckley buzzard]

The virtue of cursive writing is that it integrates mind and body, thought and movement, in a way that typing keys does not. And hand printing letters is a clumsy compromise. The interior feedback from the act of writing in turn stimulates the processes of thought and reflection. That’s why journaling works when written, not so much when typing.

Cursive handwritten communication is personal, typed messages are not.
Ask yourself, whether receiving a handwritten letter is the same as receiving a typed email.

[Calm_Cool_and_Elected]

Defund NPR and use the $ to teach cursive.

[Reily]

Same experience for me!
My father’s handwriting was so artistic it was actually beautiful. Not bad for a WWII Marine from WV! He was always so irritated that my handwriting looked like some form of connected cuneiform.

[Bruce Campbells Chin]

There is a movement back towards "Blue Book" exams - tests where you have to write our your answers in long hand rather than typing it out. The purpose is to prevent AI-based cheating.

Cursive is faster than printing.

[Steely Tom]

I had hoped that NPR would be kaput by now.

They still have bandwidth to be concerned that cursive handwriting might be tied in with white supremacy, and therefore, nuclear war.

[SkyDancer]

LOL - terrific!!