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C - Originally published November 6th, last updated August 2018

R - Discusses why cursive should be taught in school and how it can help

A - Concordia University, Portland

A - No spelling or grammar errors

P - Opinion

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C - Originally published January 6, 2018

R - Discusses how it can help certain individuals and why cursive should still be taught in school

A - Penmanship, SC J Winter

A - No spelling or grammar errors

P - Informational

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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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C - Originally published July 26, 2016

R - Discusses how people agree and disagree if cursive handwriting should be taught in school or not

A - Joe Heim

A - No spelling or grammar errors

P - Informational

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C - Originally published October 7, 2019

R - Discusses what readers think about whether or not

A - Scholastic New Edition 5/6

A - No spelling or grammar errors

P - Opinion

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C - Originally posted October 17, 2016

R - Discusses where cursive writing is taught

A - PBS

A - No spelling or grammar errors

P - Opinion

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Why don't the common-core standards include cursive writing?

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Should schools teach cursive handwriting? The question is a polarizing one in the K-12 education world.

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C - Originally published August 23, 2019

R - Discusses the debate between bringing back cursive handwriting

A - Travis Guillory

A - No spelling or grammar errors

P - Opinion

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TULSA - You may want to hold off before sending that handwritten note to your grandchild.

That's because a growing number of young people can no longer read cursive.

Since the U.S. adopted Common Core standards in public schools back in 2010, cursive has declined and even disappeared entirely in some school districts.

But, is erasing cursive to the detriment of future generations?

We're doing some homework on the collapse of cursive in this Denver7 360 report, talking with a calligrapher who says there's still benefits to knowing cursive, a professor who teaches future teachers, a tutor who says good riddance and another who says it still has some practicality.

Let's begin with keeping cursive alive - in the home studio of Srujana Nimmagadda, owner of Menakshee Designs.

"Learning to write well is something that you're never going to regret," said Nimmagadda, whose day job is working at Ball Aerospace as an aerospace engineer. "I know it's unique that I also do calligraphy," she said.

For her, it's not a cloudy issue at all; good handwriting has value.

"I think there's just a different sort of connection that you have receiving a hand-written letter," Nimmagadda said.

And she argues there's a quiet confidence projected when communicating in cursive.

"If there's a way to keep it in schools, I think they should," she said.

That brings us to Dr. Krista Griffin, a literacy professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

"There isn't a lot of research supporting cursive one way or another," Griffin said.

She has 25 years of experience teaching future teachers.

"There's no one-size-fits-all anything in education," Griffin said. "That's what I tell those future teachers."

Griffin says in the 21 st century, with high stakes standardized testing, cursive isn't always worth valuable classroom time, especially given the demands put on teachers today.

"If I'm a teacher and I know my job is dependent on how well my students do, cursive isn't on the test," she said.

But, she also sees strong cognitive learning with reading and writing in cursive.

"When I'm taking notes, I can't move as quickly as when I'm keyboarding," Griffin said. "So, I'm going to be thinking about what the professor is saying and paraphrasing, which is a higher-level cognitive skill."

Other experts agree.

"There's a myth that in the era of computers we don't need handwriting," said a leading national researcher. "That's not what our research is showing. What we found was that children until about Grade 6 were writing more words, writing faster and expressing more ideas if they could use handwriting - printing or cursive."

But - Victor Camacho questions the time-commitment given to cursive.

"I learned cursive when I was in 3 rd grade," Camacho said. "And I haven't used it since. There was no real practical reason to use it."

Camacho is now the owner of High Performance Tutoring, with 35 Denver-based tutors. His tutors put a heavy emphasis on STEM disciplines.

"Art is practical in that it kind of feeds our soul in a sense," Camacho said. "But, it's not practical in the sense that, 'Oh - you need to eat.'"

He believes a greater emphasis on things like statistics, personal finance and computer programming would be much more beneficial in school than teaching cursive.

Camacho believes higher proficiency in those skills could also alleviate many ongoing societal issues.

"If we replace cursive with helping people manage their finances, I think that would go a long way," he said. "How to manage money and how compounding interest works and how investments work and risks vs. returns. That's what children should be learning."

Stephanie Rosalky is the owner of Wash Park Tutoring, and she doesn't disagree.

"Cursive is not a skill that is needed today to be successful," Rosalky said. "Everything has really moved to a technology platform."

But, Rosalky says cursive does have practical applications, for example, it can help with disorders like dyslexia on a case-by-case basis.

"It kind of limits some reversals that are happening for students," Rosalky said.

"I have a friend who has dyslexia and she will do less reversals and omit fewer letters when she uses cursive," Griffin said.

Both Griffin and Rosalky also respect the argument that cursive is a long-forgotten, elegant form of writing that is appreciated more by older generations.

"They see it as a very personal way of communicating that gets lost," Griffin said.

"It is beautiful," Rosalky said. "It looks very nice."

And that brings us back to Nimmagadda.

"There's something very grounding about picking up a pen and paper," Nimmagadda said. "There's a lot of history and tradition. You can tell what's happening in a society through the years as you study a style of script."
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Should cursive still be taught in schools?

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TULSA - You may want to hold off before sending that handwritten note to your grandchild. That's because a growing number of young people can no longer read cursive. Since the U.S. adopted Common Core standards in public schools back in 2010, cursive has declined and even disappeared entirely in some school districts.

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C - Originally published August 23, 2019

R - Discusses why some schools still teach cursive handwriting

A - PBS

A - No spelling or grammar errors

P - Informational

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Starting in the 1970s, and under the recent implementation of the Common Core, a former pillar of elementary education has been largely forgotten. But there's a feeling that learning cursive still has value, even in the age of typing and texting. The NewsHour's April Brown reports from North Carolina, one of a handful of states that's moved to make learning the formal, curlicue letters mandatory.

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Why some schools still insist on lessons in elegant cursive

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Starting in the 1970s, and under the recent implementation of the Common Core, a former pillar of elementary education has been largely forgotten. But there's a feeling that learning cursive still has value, even in the age of typing and texting.