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Developing an attractive, legible cursive handwriting style certainly has great aesthetic value, but it also has numerous mental, physical, social, and practical benefits. Here are the Top 10 reasons to learn cursive!

1. Improved neural connections. Cursive handwriting stimulates the brain in ways that typing cannot. It improves the dynamic interplay of the left and right cerebral hemispheres, helps build neural pathways, and increases mental effectiveness. According to Virginia Berninge r, a researcher and professor at the University of Washington, "Pictures of brain activity have illustrated that sequential finger movements used in handwriting activated massive regions of the brain involved in thinking, language, and working memory. Handwriting differs from typing because it requires executing sequential finger strokes to form a letter, whereas keyboarding only involves touching a key."

2. Improved ability to read cursive. When individuals cannot read cursive, they are cursively illiterate in their own language. The ability to read cursive is required in many settings.

3. Increased writing speed. The connectivity of a simple cursive style is faster to write than the stop and-start strokes of printing. Speed has been shown to increase attention span during writing. This increases continuity and fluidity in writing, which in turn encourages greater amounts of writing.

4. Improved fine motor skills. "Cursive handwriting naturally develops sensory skills. Through repetition the children begin to understand how much force needs to be applied to the pencil and paper, the positioning of the pencil to paper at the correct angle, and motor planning to form each letter in fluid motion from left to right. This physical and spatial awareness allows them to write, but more importantly, builds the neural foundation of sensory skills needed for a myriad of everyday tasks such as buttoning, fastening, tying shoes, picking up objects, copying words from blackboards, and most importantly, reading." ( Cutting Cursive, The Real Cost. Candace Meyer, CEO, Minds-in-Motion, Inc.)

5. Increased retention. The act of taking notes by hand instead of on a computer encourages a student to process the content and reframe it, which leads to better understanding and retention. Studies indicate that college students remembered information better one week later when they transcribed a paragraph in cursive than when they printed it or used a keyboard.

6. Ease of learning. Printing is more difficult than cursive due to the frequent stop-and-start motion when forming letters. In addition, some printed letters look similar and are easily reversed, like the b and d, which is often confusing to children. Cursive is of particular value to children with learning challenges such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, and difficulties with attention.

7. Improved legibility and spelling ability. Cursive requires children to write from left to right so that the letters will join in proper sequence and with proper spacing, making their writing easier to read. It also aids with spelling through muscle memory, as the hand acquires memory of spelling patterns through fluid movements that are used repeatedly. This is the same phenomenon that occurs when pianists learn patterns of hand movements through continued repetition.

8. Increased self-discipline. Cursive handwriting is complex, and is inherently associated with the development of fine-motor skills and hand-eye coordination. Learning cursive prompts children to also develop self-discipline, which is a useful skill in all areas of life.

9. Higher quality signature. Cursive handwriting will improve the attractiveness, legibility, and fluidity of one's signature.

10. Increased self-respect. The ability to master the skill of writing clearly and fluidly improves the students' confidence to communicate freely with the written word. Handwriting is a vital life skill.

Top 10 Reasons to Learn Cursive by Iris Hatfield, author of New American Cursive

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Top 10 Reasons to Learn Cursive - Memoria Press

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Developing an attractive, legible cursive handwriting style certainly has great aesthetic value, but it also has numerous mental, physical, social, and practical benefits. Here are the Top 10 reasons to learn cursive! 1. Improved neural connections. Cursive handwriting stimulates the brain in ways that typing cannot.

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By Nancy Bailey

Cursive writing is important for many reasons, and its loss in America's classrooms should raise concerns. Cursive not only differs from print in the way it looks, it connects letters to words in a meaningful and productive way. It has been shown to assist children with reading difficulties like dyslexia.

All students benefit by learning how to write in cursive. Scientific American reported on a study which found that students who write notes in cursive during lectures remember much more than if they use their laptop. If students never learn longhand (cursive) it might impede their learning. Print is cumbersome and takes too long when taking notes.

With the advent of the unproven Common Core State Standards, cursive writing fell by the wayside. Common Core is supposed to lead students to mastery, competency-based, or personalized learning on the computer. There's no research to indicate learning only by technology works. But those focused on technology don't see any purpose to cursive writing. They believe if you teach a child keyboarding they'll be set for life.

Those in favor of cursive claim it's still important that children grow up and be able to sign checks, write thank you notes, or read historical documents. While that's important, it misses the most important reasons why students should learn cursive writing. Also, since these reasons hardly make a convincing argument for students to spend time learning cursive, many states no longer require teachers to teach cursive handwriting.

Schools in Louisiana and Alabama, however, are bringing back cursive. Other schools should too, and here's why.

For many children, learning cursive is a pleasurable experience. They are proud of their signature, and of being able to express their ideas in writing in diaries and journals. Cursive writing teaches a variety of skills.

visual-motor coordination.

visual synthesis.

visual perception.

visual memory.

spatial relationship.

focus.

spelling.

reading.

self-confidence.

For the record, keyboarding is also an important skill. But cursive writing should not have to compete with keyboarding. Children can and should get instruction in both cursive writing and keyboarding.

For children who have extreme fine motor coordination difficulties, or dysgraphia, and cursive writing is too much of a chore, keyboarding can be helpful. Children with such difficulties are easy to spot and they should not be forced to do cursive.

However, cursive writing can be helpful to children struggling with reading and writing difficulties. Children with dyslexia might be able to remember words better if they can string letters together in cursive. In 2014, PBS News Hour had a special "How Cursive Can Help Students with Dyslexia Connect the Dots."

I personally write cursive and could not learn well without it. Cursive writing helps me remember. There's something about the kinesthetic, or tactile, movement on paper, reading what I've written, and also sometimes verbally discussing it with others, or I talk to myself, that seals it in my memory. I am also grateful for the semester of typing I took in high school. I am speedy and efficient at the keyboard because of it.

But I still rely on cursive writing for formulating my thoughts and ideas. It is worth repeating. It helps me when listening to lectures. I take notes, listen, read, rewrite, and later repeat the information to myself verbally. It got me through college with good grades.

If your child's school doesn't teach cursive, there are many worksheets available online. Stores like Target and Staples usually have cursive writing practice workbooks. To reuse them, place a clear transparency over the page and give children an erasable pen. Help children do cursive over the summer or when they have free time if it isn't too taxing.
References
In the long run, cursive writing will be a worthy skill that will assist students in many ways, in their future education, or life in general.

Cindi May, "A Learning Secret: Don't Take Notes with a Laptop." Scientific American. June 3, 2014.

Jin Bo, Julia Barta, Hilary Ferencak, Sara Comstock, Vanessa Riley, and Joni Krueger. "Developmental Characteristics in Cursive and Printed Letter-Writing for School-Age Children." Journal of Motor Learning and Development, 2014. 2, 1-8.

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Teach Cursive Writing! Why It's Important for Children Including Those with Dyslexia

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By Nancy Bailey Cursive writing is important for many reasons, and its loss in America's classrooms should raise concerns. Cursive not only differs from print in the way it looks, it connects letters to words in a meaningful and productive way. It has been shown to assist children with reading difficulties like dyslexia.

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Teaching connected-style handwriting, otherwise known as cursive handwriting, has fallen out of fashion on many school curricula. Older generations have sometimes been shocked that some younger people today can't sign their names on official documents or even read a handwritten note.

Canadian provinces have seen a decline in teaching and learning cursive. In Ontario schools, for example, teachers might introduce cursive, but it's not mandatory.

Such a development is reflective of larger trends of focusing less on teaching and assessing handwriting for itself - and more on what it's communicating.

Alberta's kindergarten to Grade 9 curriculum, for example, stipulates that students learn to "listen, speak, read and write" and also envisions outcomes that require printing, such as connecting prior ideas. But the curriculum doesn't mandate assessing printing skills themselves. In Alberta's 2018 new draft curriculum yet to be implemented, cursive is mentioned, but it's not identified as a competency.

Beyond a nostalgia for the pre-digital age, there are good reasons why cursive handwriting needs to make a comeback. As a researcher who has studied the relationship of handwriting to literacy, along with other scholars, I've found that developing fluency in printing and handwriting so that it comes automatically matters for literacy outcomes. Handwriting is also an elegant testimony to the human capacity for written literacy and an inspiring symbol of the unique power of the human voice.

Too difficult?

In today's age of digital literacy, many think handwriting is irrelevant altogether and a waste of precious instructional time. But touching a "d" on the keyboard, for example, does not create the internal model of a "d" that printing does. Keyboarding can wait.

Some may associate cursive with any number of outdated formats of handwriting that may have indeed seemed like a curse to master - loopy, twisty and hard on little hands in terms of muscle movement and also for visual memory.

But handwriting is only difficult if it is not automatic and, in turn, offloaded into long-term memory. Evolving research in the neurosciences underscores the importance of developing automatic skills in relation to what educational psychologists call the cognitive load.

Lessons learned from sports or the performing arts highlight the importance of establishing neuronal connections that promote fluid movement. With reading and writing, too, the keys to unlocking creativity or interpretation of story elements are also related to being able to write automatically.

Lack of fluency

By Grade 4, the cognitive demands of curriculum quickly accelerate: students must produce more, faster and better. Students who have fluent handwriting consequently have more working memory capacity available to plan, organize, revise and retrieve sophisticated vocabulary.

In a study I conducted with my colleagues of about 250 Grade 4 students in an Alberta school, we found that only about half of the students in our study achieved the necessary threshold in handwriting.

These children's handwriting was insufficient to communicate the complexity of vocabulary and ideas expected in Grade 4. Most students had vocabulary they were not able to mobilize onto the page. Students' failure to reach the required threshold of expression at this level is associated with a phenomenon recognized by researchers as the Grade 4 slump, a drop in outcomes from which students may not necessarily recover.

Improving literacy outcomes

Schools must and can do better, starting early. The key is not only teaching cursive, but a greater focus on all printing to cursive handwriting, spelling instruction and fine motor skills. These developments are essential for literacy foundations in the kindergarten to Grade 3 years.

Read more: Summer play that enriches kids' reading skills - 8 fine motor activities for little fingers

Building on these earlier skills, the key to improving academic outcomes in Grade 4 is teaching young students to connect their letters, resulting in a style of handwriting that is legible and fluent.

Steven Graham, an expert in special education, writing and literacy at Arizona State University, advocates for beginning with printing or "traditional manuscript" and transitioning to what he calls mixed mostly manuscript, whereby the child is learning a continuous stroke.

Similarly, an example from early literacy scholar Sibylle Hurschler Lichtsteiner of Germany shows a transition from manuscript letters to joined letters. It evolves naturally, with support, from children's initial style of print in grades 2 to 3. Once young students have internalized stable, mental models of letter shapes, they can generalize and recognize various types of cursive script with a bit of practice.

Power of the pen

Testimonies draw attention to the power of cursive handwriting. The film Saving Private Ryan made famous the historical Bixby Letter written to the mother of sons killed in the American Civil War. While historians debate whether Abraham Lincoln or a member of his staff actually wrote the letter, ongoing interest in the letter through history suggests how human handwriting conveys personhood, care and captures imagination.

In our own era, Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate ever, reminds us:

"One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world."

Although Yousafzai first came to global attention via blogging, through her book Malala's Magic Pencil she suggests a connection between the elegance and craft of a child's handwriting and their personal agency.

Yousafzai's handwriting has become a symbol of her advocacy. It demonstrates the power of written literacy, its intimate relationship to human identity and existence and its potential to remind the world of ultimate belief in human agency for good. Generations before, the young diarist Anne Frank did the same.

Our society impoverishes children if we don't learn from those who have gone before us. People who learn how to spell and to develop legible, fluent handwriting will have tools at their avail to confidently express themselves and circumvent inconveniences like losing power on one's digital device.

It's high time to put cursive skills back on the curriculum across Canada.

[ Like what you've read? Want more? Sign up for The Conversation's daily newsletter. ]

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Why cursive handwriting needs to make a school comeback

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Teaching connected-style handwriting, otherwise known as cursive handwriting, has fallen out of fashion on many school curricula. Older generations have sometimes been shocked that some younger people today can't sign their names on official documents or even read a handwritten note. Canadian provinces have seen a decline in teaching and learning cursive.

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Baby boomers and Gen Xers who remember laboring over cursive penmanship in grade school might feel a twinge of envy over millennials who, by and large, have escaped those wrist-cramping lessons.

After all, what could be more superfluous than cursive in an age when virtually all written communication is done by keyboard?

Not so fast. Cursive, or script, a curricular afterthought for at least a couple of decades, is making a comeback.

Proponents say the art of composing in an unbroken line of curved and loopy letters helps students to take rapid notes, read documents - including the Constitution, to name a prominent example - and develop fine motor skills.

Alabama and Louisiana passed laws in 2016 mandating cursive proficiency in public schools, the latest of 14 states to do so. Last fall, the 1.1 million-student New York City schools, the nation's largest public school system, encouraged the teaching of cursive to students, generally in the third grade.

In Pennsylvania, the public school curriculum is determined at the district level, so there is no statewide requirement for cursive or any other subject. And Common Core, which Pennsylvania used to adopt its own standards in 2013, makes no mention of handwriting.

Even so, most students get at least a cursory introduction to cursive in early grades, if only to learn how to sign their names. For now, anyway, cursive signatures - more distinctive and thus harder to forge than printed names - remain the standard for checks and most other official documents.

"We teach it as part of our third-grade curriculum," said Diane Neikam, supervisor of elementary curriculum in the Parkland School District. "The students receive a handwriting book, the teachers show them the strokes and letters and how to connect the strokes. They'll do a small, quick mini-lesson and then the students will practice it on their own."

While the district, like most, devotes far more energy to keyboard proficiency than cursive, "we do feel its a valuable skill to learn," Neikam said. "Some do better in note-taking versus printing or even typing on a computer."

In East Penn School District, "students learn letter formation at the end of grade two and learn connecting letters to form words in grade three," spokeswoman Laura Groh said in an email.

The Catholic Diocese of Allentown mandates cursive lessons in its schools. Colleen Weiss, principal of St. Theresa School in Hellertown, said cursive is part of the language arts curriculum.

"It helps children develop fine motor skills," Weiss said, pointing to one of the chief benefits beyond the ability to write rapidly. "It also helps them read certain documents better and makes a more well-rounded student."

"Some even like it," she added with a laugh.

Cursive comes in many forms, from the ornate and elegant Spencerian and Copperplate versions used in ceremonial documents to the basic Palmer and D'Nealian methods, the styles traditionally taught in schools.

"It's definitely not necessary but I think it's, like, cool to have it," said Emily Ma, a 17-year-old senior at New York City's academically rigorous Stuyvesant High School who was never taught cursive in school and had to learn it on her own.

Skeptics question the advantage of cursive over printing and wonder whether teaching it takes away from other valuable instruction.

"I think students would all benefit from learning the piano, but I don't think schools should require all students take piano lessons," said Anne Trubek, author of "The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting."

Still, a couple of lessons couldn't hurt. New York state Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis began pushing for cursive education when she encountered an 18-year-old at a voter registration event who printed out his name in block letters.

"I said to him, 'No, you have to sign here,"' Malliotakis said. "And he said, 'That is my signature. I never learned script."'

The Associated Press and staff writer Andrew Wagaman contributed to this story

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Sticking to the script: Cursive making a comeback in the nation's classrooms

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Baby boomers and Gen Xers who remember laboring over cursive penmanship in grade school might feel a twinge of envy over millennials who, by and large, have escaped those wrist-cramping lessons. After all, what could be more superfluous than cursive in an age when virtually all written communication is done by keyboard?

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Cursive handwriting instruction is returning to elementary school classrooms in New York City.

Schools chancellor Carmen Fariña has committed to include cursive writing in third-grade curriculum in city schools, according to Staten Island assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, who has advocated for cursive instruction. Many schools have already started implementing the curriculum.

The assemblywoman said it's important for young people to "know how to write a signature of their own to identify themselves, and have the ability to sign a legal document, check, or voter registration form."

"Without knowing how to read script, students can't even read historic documents like the Declaration of Independence," she said in a statement Wednesday.

Penmanship classes were dropped when the new Common Core educational standards were crafted. But some states have been fighting to restore cursive instruction.

A Department of Education handbook for the 2016-2017 school year includes an instruction manual for cursive handwriting, and it addresses the question of whether print or cursive are still relevant in the digital age.

"Evidence reveals an advantage for handwriting using pen and paper over keyboarding for students in grades 2 to 6 for amount written, rate of word writing, and number of ideas expressed," the DOE manual states.

The manual continues: "Despite advances in computer technology, research supports the argument that today's students still need instruction in handwriting for two primary reasons. First, learning to form letters by hand improves perception of letters and contributes to better reading and spelling. Second, automatic letter writing promotes better composing-both amount written and quality of writing."

The DOE says it's up to school leaders and staff to decide how to incorporate cursive and manuscript instruction, and cursive instruction is not mandated.

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Cursive Writing Education Returns to NYC Schools

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Cursive handwriting instruction is returning to elementary school classrooms in New York City. Schools chancellor Carmen Fariña has committed to include cursive writing in third-grade curriculum in city schools, according to Staten Island assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, who has advocated for cursive instruction. Many schools have already started implementing the curriculum.

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