“The 360” shows you diverse perspectives on the day’s top stories and debates.
What’s happening
For Americans over a certain age, the idea of not learning cursive in school is close to unimaginable. The experience of mastering the looping letters and rhythmic flow from word to word — while never getting a satisfying answer for why Q and Z look like that — was a quintessential part of elementary education for generations.
But that’s not the case in the digital age. After instruction in cursive was omitted from national Common Core standards in 2010, the requirement to learn it was nixed from the curriculum in many schools across the country, replaced by purportedly more relevant subjects like computer skills.
But over the past several years, a growing number of states have been reversing that trend, adding cursive to their mandatory education standards. In California, an amendment requiring “instruction in cursive or joined italics” for grades one to six was added to the state’s education code in October.
Why there’s debate
Part of the push to revive cursive instruction is rooted in practical concerns. Advocates for requiring it in schools worry about the challenges students will face if they’re unable to read historical documents and handwritten letters or efficiently jot down notes.
Some research also suggests that the process of learning cursive stimulates the brain in ways that forge deep connections with language that help kids thrive in a wide range of important educational areas — something that typing instruction simply doesn’t do. Others say there’s a crucial emotional element to being able to read original documents exactly as they were written, rather than transcribed into text on a screen.
Those on the other side of the argument — including many teachers and education experts — say cursive may have some value but is far less important than the things that would have to be set aside to make room for it in schools’ jam-packed lesson plans. They also make the case that the inability to read cursive is really more of an inconvenience than a genuine impediment to learning. Some education researchers add that kids get the same cognitive benefits from learning to write by hand, regardless of whether it’s in cursive or traditional block letters.
Perspectives
Cursive gives us access to many critical things
“There’s the problem of students not being able to read the Declaration of Independence, as well as anything else — letters, journals, official documents — written before the 1930s. And we don’t even have to limit the discussion to historical documents. There are present-day moments that someone not versed in the art of penmanship could miss out on, like thank you notes and birthday cards and other communications that often come only from those who are older.” — Nedra Rhone, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Kids who don’t read cursive aren’t actually missing out on that much
“I love Grandma, but Grandma ain’t been writing something in cursive to most people for a good while. And how often are you reading the Constitution in its original form?” — Steve Graham, writing education researcher at Arizona State University, to Wall Street Journal
Cursive isn’t useless, it’s just less valuable than everything else kids need to learn
“Sure, students should learn how to write in cursive. They should also learn Latin, philosophy, baking, astrobiology, oceanography, and the complete Beatles catalog. But with only 180 or so school days in a year, we have to pick and choose. And cursive, unfortunately, doesn’t make the cut.” — Jeffrey Barg, Philadelphia Inquirer
Cursive lessons forge important pathways that benefit all types of learning
“To the human brain, the act of handwriting is very different from punching letters on a keyboard. Handwriting requires precise motor skills — controlling the individual strokes and the pressure of the pen — that vary for each letter, and these stimulate greater activity in a broader group of brain regions when compared with typing.” — Markham Heid, Washington Post
Handwriting matters; the style it comes in doesn’t
“Many argue that writing in cursive encourages memorization, but it is unclear whether it is cursive specifically or handwriting itself that lends this benefit. I understand that handwriting imprints the memory better — I notice it even in adulthood — but I am skeptical that there is a reason the handwriting is better done in cursive.” — John McWhorter, New York Times
Losing cursive means losing part of the connected human experience
“The disappearance of cursive is also one more example of technology — in the form of plastic keyboards with look-the-same letters or emojis — replacing personality, just like emails have replaced handwritten letters or notes and prerecorded, computer-generated ‘voices’ have replaced real people when you call virtually any large business. ... It’s about losing one more distinct example of what makes us who we are.” — Steve Israel, Times-Herald Record
Nostalgia isn’t a good-enough reason to force children to learn an obsolete skill
“Since the late 1800s, when the typewriter struck the first blow to penmanship, handwriting has become an increasingly obsolete skill, and therefore a powerful symbol of the past. It’s an idealized past, when Americans supposedly followed uniform models of appearance and behavior and seemingly obeyed the rules.” — Tamara Plakins Thornton, author of Handwriting in America: A Cultural History, Los Angeles Times
Photo illustration: Joanne Imperio for Yahoo News
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December 02, 2023 at 05:00PM
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