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When Jack Lew was nominated to be Treasury secretary in 2013, President Barack Obama joked that as a condition of the appointment, Lew would have to learn to sign his name more legibly. The secretary's signature, after all, was going to appear on US currency.

Lew, a New Yorker, was a city public-school student. And now the school system that produced him is hoping to iron out that particular wrinkle for any future potential Treasury secretary: New York is bringing back cursive instruction.

Thanks to our education system, few Americans are learning cursive, and thus, are unable to legibly sign their own names. As the federal government has become more involved in the day-to-day workings of the American classroom, a focus on test prep has become teachers' main objective. That means useful skills that fall outside the testing pattern often are neglected.

Which is what makes a decision last week from the New York City Department of Education so refreshing. When federal education standards called Common Core were adopted by the city, penmanship classes were dropped. But the current instructional handbook includes a manual for teaching cursive, and according to NBC4, many schools have already begun to implement cursive instruction.

They should be cheered for it - even if they don't grasp just why it's so important.

In a statement last week, Nicole Malliotakis, a Staten Island assemblywoman who pushed for the change, said the reason to add cursive was so that students would "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."

But this policy change is actually more beneficial for the students than school officials appear to realize. Learning how to write cursive isn't just useful for its own sake - as valuable as it is to be able to sign one's own name.

As the city Department of Education rightly pointed out, "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."

In other words: Kids were better at processing information when doing so by handwriting as opposed to typing.

In addition, scientific research (and common sense) indicates learning how to write cursive helps the development of motor skills. Writing for Psychology Today, Dr. William Klemm explains, "The benefits to brain development are similar to what you get with learning to play a musical instrument."

These benefits apply to writing more generally and cursive specifically, according to Klemm.

That's because in "cursive writing, compared to printing . . . the movement tasks are more demanding, the letters are less stereotypical and the visual-recognition requirements create a broader repertoire of letter representation."

Yes, kids could use a computer and type more legibly than they can write. But the end product is just as important as the lesson itself. Test prep and academic pressure are increasingly crowding out previously essential classes like music, art and physical education. Recess has been shortened considerably for children compared to their parents' generation, as has instruction in subjects not considered "core curriculum."

There's a larger point here: Cursive writing is far from an exception. Teachers and school administrators have learned both through studies and their own experience that, for example, the erosion of recess time has negative effects on student behavior and performance, never mind happiness. Activities tossed overboard for their perceived frivolity turned out to have a point.

Reverting to older methods of education isn't the "hipsterization" of the classroom. Instead, it's educators merely casting off prior poorly researched and executed trends in education.

The New York City Department of Education might have taken only a small step in that reversion with its decision to restart cursive instruction, but parents should cheer it nonetheless. Perhaps it's the beginning of a curriculum counterrevolution that will restore a sense of balance to children's education.

And if not, well - at least future Treasury secretaries from New York will be able to sign our currency with pride.
Bethany Mandel, a stay-at-home mom, is a senior contributor to The Federalist.

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Why we should teach cursive writing to all kids

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When Jack Lew was nominated to be Treasury secretary in 2013, President Barack Obama joked that as a condition of the appointment, Lew would have to learn to sign his name more legibly. The secretary's signature, after all, was going to appear on US currency. Lew, a New Yorker, was a city public-school student.

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C- The video was posted two years ago on YouTube.
R- The video shows how to start writing basic cursive letters for school-age students.
A- The publisher is "Super Teacher Girl", and it is posted on youtube.
A- This is a how to video to show the basics of cursive letter writing.
P- The purpose of this information is to show that cursive writing is still relevant since there are videos instructing the basic letter writing.

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cursive videos for kids - Yahoo Video Search Results

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The picture was originally created on July 16, 2011 for various newspapers.  It has been published several times since then.  The picture depicts why cursive writing should still be taught in schools.  It was created by the political Cartoonist, Gary Varvel for the Political Insider newspaper.  There are no grammatical errors, and it is trying to persuade people that cursive writing is still important.

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

One of the most widely cited criticisms of the Common Core State Standards is that they don't require teaching students to write in cursive.

Some states, such as Tennessee and California, have added cursive to the standards. Louisiana appears to have gone the farthest, mandating that students get instruction in cursive every year from the 3rd through 12th grades.

Proponents of teaching cursive say students need to learn it to be able to read historical documents, such as the U.S. Constitution. Without knowing cursive, students "will be locked out of doing research with literary papers and archival collections," Valerie Hotchkiss, a library director at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2014. "They will not even be able to read their grandmother's diary or their parents' love letters."

Others say cursive helps students write faster than print, and that they need it to develop a signature.

Technology Took Priority

So why didn't the common-core writers include cursive? In a recent interview, Sue Pimentel, one of the lead writers of the English/language arts standards, explained that the decision was about priorities-and that learning to use technology took precedence.

"We thought that more and more of student communications and adult communications are via technology. And knowing how to use technology to communicate and to write was most critical for students," she said. "The idea is you have to pick things to put in there. .... It really was a discussion."

Anchor standard No. 6 for writing illustrates the tech focus, asking students to "use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others."

The decision to exclude cursive was also based on feedback from teachers, according to Pimentel.

"One of the things we heard from teachers around the country-in some cases, obviously not all-was that sometimes cursive writing takes an enormous amount of instructional time," she said. "You could be spending time on other things rather than students practicing cursive writing. It's really a matter of emphasis."

Pimentel points out that the K-5 language standards do require students to "print all upper- and lowercase letters," so it's not as if handwriting is left out of the document entirely. She also notes that states had the ability to add standards, and that adding cursive is "very legitimate."

"For states that added it, I have no qualms," she said.

Being able to read in cursive is important, Pimentel says. But the writers didn't think it was a place teachers should spend a lot of time and energy.

"One of the things we were thinking is that if we put cursive writing in, there would be all this practice of forming your letters," she said. "But if we didn't have it in there, it wasn't that teachers wouldn't teach it, it's that it wouldn't have [as much] emphasis."

Looking at the Research

But what does the research say about cursive? Does it back the decision not to specifically require it in the standards?

In discussing this issue, people often conflate handwriting overall-which could be in any script-with cursive.

According to Steve Graham, a professor of educational leadership and innovation at Arizona State University, who has studied writing instruction for more than 30 years, research has shown benefits for teaching and practicing handwriting generally.

Being able to handwrite quickly makes it easier for people to get their ideas on paper. Students who struggle with handwriting "may have to devote other cognitive resources to this low-level task, which takes away from other higher-level aspects of writing like thinking about how you're going to organize a text," he said.

Having good handwriting also helps students in school, where teacher surveys have shown the majority of writing is still done on paper. "A reasonable amount of research suggests if your handwriting is not very legible, people will form opinions about the quality of what you say," said Graham. "The more legible paper will get higher scores for writing than the less legible paper of the same quality."

There's also some research that suggests people remember things better when taking notes by hand, rather than with a word processor.

Little Difference Between Print and Cursive

So what about cursive specifically? Are there reasons to write in cursive rather than print?

Not really, says Graham.

While many people say that cursive writing is faster than printing because the writer doesn't have to lift his or her pencil from the paper, the research bears that out to be only minimally true.

"Today's cursive scripts are not these flourishing things of yesteryear," he said. "They're really simple. ... If you look at the data [on speed for print and cursive], it doesn't look that different."

People also say that print is easier to read than cursive, but again Graham says the research isn't definitive on this either.

"There's not a lot of difference between how legible the two scripts are and how fast they can be produced," he said.

Virginia Berninger, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Washington, confirmed that print-versus-cursive finding in a 2013 article for the National Association of State Boards of Education. "No clear research evidence supports one being better than the other," she wrote.

However, Berninger has also shown that printing, cursive, and keyboarding activate different brain patterns, and that in some cases, students with certain disabilities may struggle with print but do well with cursive.

According to a 2014 New York Times article, some researchers say cursive "may even be a path to treating dyslexia."

Teach One or Both?

The question still remains as to what's best practice for general classrooms.

As Graham sees it, given the many time constraints teachers have, there's really no reason to teach more than one handwriting style.

"Schools are being asked to teach typing. Should they also be asked to teach manuscript and cursive?... We want students to be fluent and legible in at least one of these-which one doesn't make that much difference."

Having students learn both, he said, "seems to be inefficient and a waste of time. ... Which one of those you teach, that ought to be up to the schools and teachers." While U.S. students traditionally begin learning to write with print letters (as the common core requires), they very well could start with cursive-as young students do in many European countries.

Berninger, on the other hand, said there's a good case for teaching both print and cursive.

"Teaching BOTH of these handwriting formats has advantages, including learning to recognize and write letters despite small variations in letter forms sharing the same name," she wrote in the NASBE commentary. "Consider all the fonts computer users can choose from for word processing. Apple's Steve Jobs was an accomplished calligrapher before he became a pioneer in technology tools to support writing-and that is one of the reasons we have so many font styles to choose from in computer writing!"
Image: Students practice both printing and cursive handwriting skills at the Mountaineer Montessori School in Charleston, W.Va. -Bob Bird/AP-File Education Week library interns Laura Zollers and Teresa Lewandowski contributed to this post. Related stories: For more news and information on reading, math, and STEM instruction: And sign up here to get alerts in your email inbox when stories are published on Curriculum Matters.

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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 an impressively polarizing one in the K-12 education world. One of the most widely cited criticisms of the Common Core State Standards is that they don't require teaching students to write in cursive. Some states, such as Tennessee and California, have added cursive to the standards.

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The article was published in January 23, 2016.  It has not been revised.  The article is for teaching cursive writing in schools.  It is from "Parents" magazine and written by Julia Prince.  There are no spelling or grammar errors, and the article is meant to inform and persuade the reader.

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To me, there is a certain beauty in a handwritten document. There is a certain romanticism in a letter, and power in the ability to read historical documents such as the Constitution, or simply being able to sign your name. I happen to believe that good penmanship helps to teach kids discipline and to take pride in something. It also helps develop the fine motor skills children will need for other tasks in life.

In my conversations with parents regarding whether they think it's important to teach cursive in our schools, many are shocked to learn that their children will most likely not be taught this lost art. The majority of them have agreed that this is unacceptable.

I took a poll on Facebook and asked parents what they thought and the results were overwhelming in support of teaching children cursive. There is a difference between what is known as a "signature" and printing your name. One parent commented,

I just got my daughter, at age 14, a debit card to teach her all about banking. She is so embarrassed when she has to sign her name because it looks like a 4 yr old signed. She says she feels so stupid! I bought her a third grade cursive book and a white board with the lines ( dotted lines too) so she can learn. We think it shows ignorance. She feels the same way.

If so many parents feel that good penmanship and learning cursive are important to a person's development, why are our schools doing away with it? Hillsdale College did an online course entitled, "A Proper Understanding of K-12 Education: Theory and Practice" which featured associate professor of education Daniel Coupland explaining that today's technology is a definite culprit. He said:

I understand the argument that we are moving much more in a technological direction and we are using handheld devices and computers in order to express those ideas, but I am concerned about the loss of other things connected with handwriting...even of the development of the motor skills that kids develop by actually holding a pencil and actually being able to write. In addition to that, I think it's a great learning tool as well, in that if you have to form the letters with your hands...because there's some kind of connection with using your hands to form those letters. It cements it in your mind a lot better. I understand that we're moving in a particular direction in terms of technology but I mourn the loss of those things if we move completely away from it.

Let's not forget that handwriting is not included in the failing Common Core standards, either.

Should public schools teach cursive? Let us know your thoughts by leaving a comment.

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Why Aren't Kids Being Taught Cursive in School Anymore?

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To me, there is a certain beauty in a handwritten document. There is a certain romanticism in a letter, and power in the ability to read historical documents such as the Constitution, or simply being able to sign your name. I happen to believe that good penmanship helps to teach kids discipline and to take pride in something.