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Mike Peters' Editorial Cartoons                   (Image - Claim) 

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Mike Peters' Editorial Cartoons                   (Image - Claim) 

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posted on 2011-09-14. Not revised or updated. It agrees with my claim of students learning cursive writing, Author of the image is Mike Peter. The URL is cartoonistgroup.com , URL Domain proves it is very biased. There is no spelling or grammar errors. Entertains you how we need cursive and how Ohio fell apart without it.

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Why don’t the common-core standards include cursive writing?    (Article - CounterClaim) 

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Why don’t the common-core standards include cursive writing?    (Article - CounterClaim) 

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Posted on Oct 17, 2016 10:56 AM. It agrees with my claim but it also shows points why we don't learn it. URL is pbs.org, author is Liana Heitin. URL is safe, not biased. No spelling or grammar errors. Teaches you why we don't learn cursive anymore and what the claims and counterclaims are.

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Should schools teach cursive handwriting? The question is a 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Proponents of teaching cursive say students need to learn it to be able to read historical documents, such as the U.S. Constitution.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!"
This story was produced by Education Week, a nonprofit, independent news organization with comprehensive pre-K-12 news and analysis. Read the original post here.

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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. 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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Cursive Handwriting Will No Longer Be Taught Because It's a Big, Old Waste of Time        (Article - CounterClaim) 

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Cursive Handwriting Will No Longer Be Taught Because It's a Big, Old Waste of Time        (Article - CounterClaim) 

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Made on Nov 15, 2013, 10:52 am. Not edited or Revised. Disagrees with my claim saying cursive is a big waste of time. It is a counterclaim. eonline.com, John Boone is the creator. URL domain is biased. Grammar errors include full capital words. Informs you how cursive writing will no longer be taught in schools because its a "waste of time."

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iStock

Also, because computers.

The biggest controversy to take place in the world of penmanship is happening right now: The Common Core education standards dictate that cursive will no longer be taught in elementary schools. And things are getting pretty heated.

Where does your allegiance fall?

Seven states-California, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Utah-are now fighting to keep cursive in the curriculum. Their argument is that "it helped distinguish the literate from the illiterate."

Jokes on them because all kids are illiterate these days. Because again: computers.

"It's much more likely that keyboarding will help students succeed in careers and in school than it is that cursive will," said Morgan Polikoff, assistant professor of K-12 policy and leadership at the University of Southern California. So instead of cursive, kids might learn keyboarding.

Here's our two cents: You spend the entire year in third grade learning how to write in cursive and then will never, ever write in cursive again. Instead, schools should add additional spelling lessons to the curriculum. Kids are more tech savvy these days, but because of Microsoft Spell Check, NOBODY knows how to spell without a computer anymore.

Let's spend that time teaching kids that there is a difference between language used to text and tweet and proper, written English. It's no longer a matter of knowing "your" vs. "you're," it's learning that it's definitely never "ur."

Also, the capital, cursive "Q" looks so stupid.

Advocates for learning cursive (including Idaho representative Linden Bateman, 72) argue that "more areas of the human brain are engaged when children use cursive handwriting than when they keyboard."

Bateman continues, "The fluid motion employed when writing script enhances hand-eye coordination and develops fine motor skills, in turn promoting reading, writing and cognition skills."

And if that's the reasons schools taught cursive, sure, fine. That's great. Also, there are plenty of other ways that kids can develop hand-eye coordination that doesn't involve spending a year of their prime development time learning a new alphabet.

But Bateman also argues that forgoing cursive may have much more consequential results: He argues we "will lose the ability to interpret valuable cultural resources-historical documents, ancestors' letters and journals, handwritten scholarship - if they can't read cursive."

"The Constitution of the United States is written in cursive. Think about that," Bateman said.

The Constitution of the United States is also available online, typed out. Not in cursive. Soooooo...We're probably good.

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Cursive Handwriting Will No Longer Be Taught in Schools Because It's a Big, Old Waste of Time

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iStock Also, because computers. The biggest controversy to take place in the world of penmanship is happening right now: The Common Core education standards dictate that cursive will no longer be taught in elementary schools. And things are getting pretty heated. Where does your allegiance fall?

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Should Schools Teach Cursive                      (Image - Claim)

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Should Schools Teach Cursive                      (Image - Claim)

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Made on October 7th, 2019. Not revised or updated. It agrees with my claim of writing in cursive. Author is Dean MacAdam, also the illustrator. URL is scholastic.com means it is very biased. No spelling or Grammar errors. It informs you of why we should learn cursive and how no one knows what it is.

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Cursive writing class is not over yet                              (Image - Claim)

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Cursive writing class is not over yet                              (Image - Claim)

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Posted on Apr 12th, 2019, Updated on the same day. It agrees with my claim of wanting cursive to come back to schools. The author is MassLive but in the URL domain it is a .com but it also has the word opinion in the URL "/opinion./"That makes it a biased website. No spelling or grammar errors in the passage. Informs you that cursive writing is not over and could be coming back.

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Just when we think traditional education is being tossed into the school trash bin, we get reminded that some of the old ways still actually work.

Social studies and civics are being restored to places of significance, at least in Massachusetts, where legislative action encourages their expansion. English teachers debate whether classic literature must be shelved for modern, often pop-culture work.

Now comes word of a comeback by an old reliable: cursive writing. It turns out that in some states, computers will not entirely replace the skill of a student being able to write his or her name.

Texas is restoring mandatory cursive writing classes for elementary school students. An Ohio law is aimed at kids being able to print letters and words by third grade and write legibly in cursive by fifth grade.

Imagine that. Kids still have to learn how to write. What was once taken for granted is not just retro, it's radical.

This has predictably stirred complaints, not just from modern parents and kids but from teachers who ask what must be dropped to fit cursive writing back into the lesson plan. It's not an unfair question, but "OK, let's not bother," is not an acceptable answer.

It's causing a low-level culture war in Massachusetts, where many private schools (notably Catholic institutions) still teach cursive, but the curriculum has been reduced or eliminated in many public schools. Not every public school teacher agrees, but many concede the need to teach technology - a need that once did not exist, but which has increased tremendously in the past generation - seems to mean something else has to go.

Digitially savvy kids also ask why cursive writing is necessary to learn. But kids have been asking "what good will this do me?" since the days they were told that harvesting the family crop on time mattered more than learning the multiplication tables or the planets.

Bringing back or maintaining traditional education cannot be done, of course, without some New Age explanation. This comes from occupational therapist Suzanne Baruch Anderson, who says cursive handwriting improves communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, which is absent when we print and type.

"The physical act of writing in cursive leads to increased comprehension and participation," Anderson says in a story by the New York-based Epoch Times. And here we thought the whole point was to make it possible to read the kid's homework.

Not being an occupational therapist, my own opinion is only observational. Cursive handwriting takes patience, and teaching kids patience can have wonderful spin-off effects.

Not everything we learned in past generations is as applicable today. Personally, I think knowing state capitals is nice but not essential, especially since teaching it can take up serious time.

Roman numerals? I'm told it doesn't take long, but is the value there? I was also never sold on the New Math of the 1960s and 1970s, and stand more in agreement with satirist and math whiz Tom Lehrer, who wryly observed that "the purpose (of New Math) is to know what you're doing, rather than getting the right answer."

Writing skill is another story. The notion that we are close to an all-digital society ignores the need to write a check or fill out any form that requires a signature - and heaven help anyone asked to produce a three-sentence essay or fill out a job form by hand.

Digital dominance is such, though, that not every kid can look at an analog clock and know the time. Modernizing education is essential, but discarding fundamental skills - in some cases, just because of an elitist distaste for the "old-fashioned" - is an inexcusable disservice to kids.

One teacher told me she knew of one cursive-illiterate girl who avoided it by printing out the letters. The girl was bright, she said, possibly brilliant. But the block lettering on official forms made her look otherwise, the teacher said.

My own experience with cursive writing could have been traumatizing, had kids of the 1960s been as aware of the Trauma-Over-Everything-Syndrome that proliferates today. The teacher assumed we were all right-handed, which I am not, so my wrong-way slant belies my place in that oppressed 10 percent of Americans known as left-handers.

The idea of going through school without being able to write my own name and other words legibly, though, was absurd. And it's still absurd, even in this digital age that makes typing another skill that somehow, before high school graduation, is worth fitting into a curriculum.

History students are again learning what made John Hancock famous. They should be able to produce a reasonable, presumably smaller version of the connected letters that made him famous. Nobody who owns a smartphone can really be considered smart, if their working knowledge stops short of being able to write their own name.

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Cursive writing class is not over yet (Viewpoint)

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Just when we think traditional education is being tossed into the school trash bin, we get reminded that some of the old ways still actually work. Social studies and civics are being restored to places of significance, at least in Massachusetts, where legislative action encourages their expansion.

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Texas Students will Have to learn cursive writing this fall.                                   (Article - Claim)-----------------

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Texas Students will Have to learn cursive writing this fall.                                   (Article - Claim)-----------------

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Posted on April 10th 2019. Updated on April 12th, 2019. This article agrees with my claim of writing in cursive. kvue.com Is the URL. The URL domain reveals this could be very biased. No spelling or grammar errors. It informs you how students in Texas have to start writing in cursive again.

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AUSTIN, Texas - Most school districts in Texas don't currently teach cursive. But that's about to change.

In 2017, the State Board of Education changed the requirements for the "English Language Arts and Reading" portion of the state education standards known as Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills or TEKS. The changes that were adopted are set to be implemented during the 2019-2020 school year.
RELATED: Arizona becomes first state to require cursive writing in schools RELATED: Texas Senate passes budget, teacher pay likely point of contention with House
One of those changes is reintroducing cursive writing to elementary school students.

According to the list of updates issued under the Texas Education Code, starting this year, students will be taught to write cursive letters in second grade. By third grade, students will be expected to be able to "write complete words, thoughts, and answers legibly in cursive writing leaving appropriate spaces between words."
RELATED: Austin ISD raising money to change school names linked to Confederacy
Diane Schallert is a professor with the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. She looks at how language and learning coincide as well as the socio-functional descriptions of both oral and written language. She also has known cursive for quite some time.

"In first grade, we learned only cursive," Schallert said. "We never learned to print."

She said learning a language -- in any type of form -- can be valuable for someone's growth.

"With language comprehension, there's this reciprocity between producing and comprehending," Schallert said. "By seeing the letter being formed slowly at your control, you're considering its sound-symbol correspondence."
RELATED: Texas estimates it may owe feds $223 million after illegally decreasing special education funding
She also said deciding what to include in the state curriculum is more constraining than people think.

"There's only so much time in the day," Schallert said. "Whatever you decide to put into the curriculum, you're deciding to take something out. It's a big decision to decide to exclude it or include it. That's hard."

By fourth grade, students will be expected to write legibly in cursive to complete assignments.

Cursive will be added back into elementary school curriculum during the 2019-2020 school year for all Texas districts.
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Texas students will have to learn cursive again starting this fall

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AUSTIN, Texas - Most school districts in Texas don't currently teach cursive. But that's about to change. In 2017, the State Board of Education changed the requirements for the "English Language Arts and Reading" portion of the state education standards known as Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills or TEKS.

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Why Schools Stopped Teaching Cursive                       (Image - Counterclaim)

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Why Schools Stopped Teaching Cursive                       (Image - Counterclaim)

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Made on April 26, 2016 at 5:24 am. Not revised or updated. It disagrees with my claim showing a counterclaim. Thefederalistpaper is the author. The URL domain is a .org and it is trusty. No spelling or grammar errors. Entertains you how kids today can't read cursive and how we need it.

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States are beginning to reject the idea that kids can do without learning cursive handwriting.

Most importantly from our perspective is many historical documents like the Constitution and Declaration of Independence are written in cursive. If future citizens can't read cursive they can't read the Constitution in it's original form and will be forced to rely on "translations."

reports:

The swirling lines from Linden Bateman's pen have been conscripted into a national fight to keep cursive writing in American classrooms.

Cursive. Penmanship. Handwriting.

In years gone by, it helped distinguish the literate from the illiterate.

But now, in the digital age, people are increasingly communicating by computer and smartphone. No handwritten signature necessary.

Call it a sign of the times. When the new Common Core educational standards were crafted, penmanship classes were dropped. But at least seven of the 45 states that adopted the standards are fighting to restore the cursive instruction.
The argument for cursive
Bateman, a 72-year-old state representative from Idaho, says cursive conveys intelligence and grace, engages creativity and builds brain cells.

"Modern research indicates that more areas of the human brain are engaged when children use cursive handwriting than when they keyboard," said Bateman, who handwrites 125 ornate letters each year. "We're not thinking this through. It's beyond belief to me that states have allowed cursive to slip from the standards."
The movement to have teaching cursive restored
States that adopted Common Core aren't precluded from deviating from the standards. But in the world of education, where classroom time is limited and performance stakes are high, optional offerings tend to get sidelined in favour of what's required.

That's why at least seven states - California, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Utah - have moved to keep the cursive requirement. Legislation passed in North Carolina and elsewhere couples cursive with memorization of multiplication tables as twin "back to basics" mandates.

Cursive advocates cite recent brain science that indicates the fluid motion employed when writing script enhances hand-eye co-ordination and develops fine motor skills, in turn promoting reading, writing and cognition skills.They further argue that scholars of the future will lose the ability to interpret valuable cultural resources - historical documents, ancestors' letters and journals, handwritten scholarship - if they can't read cursive. If they can't write it, how will they communicate from unwired settings like summer camp or the battlefield?
"The Constitution of the United States is written in cursive. Think about that," Bateman said.

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Why Schools Stopped Teaching Cursive Brilliantly Illustrated

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States are beginning to reject the idea that kids can do without learning cursive handwriting. Advertisement - story continues below Most importantly from our perspective is many historical documents like the Constitution and Declaration of Independence are written in cursive. If future citizens can't read cursive they can't read the Constitution in it's original form...

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Should cursive writing be taught in schools                       (Video - Claim)

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Should cursive writing be taught in schools                       (Video - Claim)

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Posted on Apr. 10 2019, Has not been revised or updated. The video agrees with my claim saying cursive writing should be taught in schools. The source is youtube.com URL domain means it is very biased. The author is verified on youtube as a News channel.

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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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Cursive Handwriting Fades                                              (Image - Claim)

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Cursive Handwriting Fades                                              (Image - Claim)

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Made on November 26, 2012. Not revised or Updated. It agrees with my claim since no one is writing in cursive anymore. PoliticalCartoons.com. is the URL. Author is Dave Granlund. No spelling or grammar errors. Entertains you with Santa Claus getting a text instead of a note with cursive writing on it.

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Cursive Seemed to Go the Way of Quills and Parchment. Now It’s Coming Back.                          (Article - Claim) ---------------

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Cursive Seemed to Go the Way of Quills and Parchment. Now It’s Coming Back.                          (Article - Claim) ---------------

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On April 13, 2019. It was posted, Not edited or revised. It agrees with my claim of learning cursive writing. The author is New York times. URL domain reveals this could be very biased, .com. No grammar errors in the passage. Informs you how cursive could be coming back for us to learn.

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Nearly two dozen states have reintroduced cursive instruction since 2010, when the Common Core standards dropped a requirement that it be taught in elementary schools. Credit... Peter Stevenson for The New York Times

While cursive has been relegated to nearly extinct tasks like writing thank-you cards and signing checks, rumors of its death may be exaggerated.

The Common Core standards seemed to spell the end of the writing style in 2010 when they dropped requirements that the skill be taught in public elementary schools, but about two dozen states have reintroduced the practice since then.

Last year, elementary schools in Illinois were required to offer at least one class on cursive.

Last month, a law went into effect in Ohio providing funding for materials to help students learn cursive by fifth grade.

And beginning this fall, second graders in Texas will learn cursive, and will be required to know how to write it legibly by third grade.

Even as keyboards and screens have supplanted pencil and paper in schools, lawmakers and defenders of cursive have lobbied to re-establish this old-school writing pedagogy across the country, igniting a debate about American values and identity and exposing intergenerational fault lines.

When Anne Trubek, the author of " The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting," started studying the resurgence of cursive about a decade ago, reasons for teaching it focused on developing a civilized, well-mannered population.

"People were upset about the idea that you might not seem educated if you didn't know cursive," she said.

But in recent years, the reasoning for cursive became associated with "convention, tradition, conservatism," she said, and tied to discussions about school uniforms and the Pledge of Allegiance.

Indeed, several Republican lawmakers have spearheaded campaigns to revive the writing style.

In 2016, lawmakers in Washington introduced a bill backing cursive after Pam Roach, then a Republican state senator, noted that a constituent had said her grandchild could not read a handwritten letter. The measure did not pass.

"Part of being an American is being able to read cursive writing," Ms. Roach told King 5 News.

Lawmakers have also invoked the Declaration of Independence, which was marked by John Hancock's flamboyant signature, as a reason for a script revival.

Andrew Brenner told the local news media in Ohio in December, when he was a state representative, that he had co-sponsored a bill requiring cursive instruction because studies show benefits for brain development and hand dexterity. He said it also taught students to read prominent historical texts.

"You can learn the founding documents from reading them directly," Mr. Brenner, a Republican who now serves in the Ohio Senate, told The Fulton County Expositor.

Others have emphasized the importance of a signature.

"I think your cursive writing identifies you as much as your physical features do," Dickie Drake, a Republican state representative in Alabama who introduced a bill requiring schools to provide cursive instruction by the end of third grade, told The New York Times in 2016.

Lawmakers in Louisiana supported an even broader measure, in part, because Magna Carta and the United States Constitution were written in cursive. State senators shouted "America!" when they unanimously approved it in 2016.

The history of society is intertwined with the history of script.

"When we want to embrace the past, when we get nostalgic for the past, when we think it was better, then we get all warm and fuzzy about handwriting," Tamara Plakins Thornton, the author of "Handwriting in America," said in an interview with NPR.

Cursive was also politicized during the Cold War, becoming a display of patriotism.

"Unbelievably, there were arguments that the fact that American kids couldn't do cursive made us vulnerable to the Russian menace," Dr. Thornton said.

Psychologists and neuroscientists say that handwriting positively affects brain development, motor skills, comprehension and memory. Cursive may be particularly helpful for those with developmental dysgraphia - motor-control difficulties in forming letters - and it may help prevent the reversal and inversion of letters, according to a 2012 report.

But some research has been taken out of context, or misrepresented, to further a pro-cursive agenda, said Kate Gladstone, who calls herself the Handwriting Repairwoman and runs an organization by the same name.

"The world of handwriting is very much the world of fake news and crooked elections," she said.

In 2018, State Senator Jean Leising of Indiana was called out for citing a study that she claimed showed cursive writing "prepares students' brains for reading and enhances their writing fluency and composition." The researcher said the study made claims only about writing by hand.

There are also corporate interests at play. In 2013, Ms. Gladstone traced research that was used in bills in North and South Carolina to require cursive instruction in schools to a for-profit company that creates instructional materials to teach handwriting, Zaner-Bloser Publishing.

Kathleen Wright, a spokeswoman for the company's handwriting division, said that it does not lobby for legislation, but that it does provide lawmakers with research "because we're recognized as the gold standard of handwriting instruction," she said.

But Ms. Wright acknowledged that some legislators "may have erroneously conflated studies showing the cognitive benefits of writing by hand to focus specifically on the benefits of writing in cursive."

Sheila Lowe, the president of the American Handwriting Analysis Foundation, said that about 21 states had adopted some form of cursive requirement in schools since the Common Core standards were introduced.

"We're not trying to replace electronics," Ms. Lowe said. "Cursive is an important part of brain training."

The foundation formed Campaign for Cursive, which works with legislators to craft measures supporting the practice and offers training courses for cursive coaches as well as an annual "Cursive Is Cool" competition.

Gayna Scott, a leader of the campaign, said cursive was a surprisingly charged topic, both emotionally and politically.

"You can get people worked up about it," she said.

But the organization has been able to "change over quite a few states" by providing research to decision makers about the benefits, she added.

"There are a lot of people who think we're as old as dinosaurs," she said, but "it's a lifelong skill that is part of a well-rounded education. Why leave it out?"

Some teachers say policymakers are out of touch with the realities of the modern classroom.

"I am here to build 21st-century learners," said Heather Sox, a fifth-grade teacher in Greenville, S.C. "We should expose them, but I think you can do it in other ways that don't involve 'skill and drill.'"

A few years ago, after a new mandate was imposed, she had to "find time during the week" to teach cursive, she said. Although the students barely touched the new workbooks, she said, she still had to give them a handwriting grade.

Noelle Mapes, a third-grade teacher at a public school on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, said the agenda to include cursive classes "feels like a big nostalgia move."

"I'm a millennial teacher, so it almost feels like a boomer effort," she said.

The practice was helpful when teaching children with occupational therapy needs or fine motor skill needs. But requiring cursive is not a good use of time, she said, especially because schools and teachers face more urgent demands.

"Add typing skills, anti-racist pedagogy, add activism skills, add digital literacy," she said. "There are so many other things."

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Cursive Seemed to Go the Way of Quills and Parchment. Now It's Coming Back.

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While cursive has been relegated to nearly extinct tasks like writing thank-you cards and signing checks, rumors of its death may be exaggerated. The Common Core standards seemed to spell the end of the writing style in 2010 when they dropped requirements that the skill be taught in public elementary schools, but about two dozen states have reintroduced the practice since then.

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News Item: Proposal & Require Cursive Lessons in Grade School                         (Image - Claim)

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News Item: Proposal & Require Cursive Lessons in Grade School                         (Image - Claim)

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Posted on April 9th, 2015. Not revised or updated. It agrees with my claim about how students should learn cursive. Author is "Etomczyk" URL domain is biased because of .com. No grammar errors. Entertains you how kids are today because they text and dont know how to write in cursive.

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Should Schools be required to write cursive handwriting                          (Video - Claim)

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Should Schools be required to write cursive handwriting                          (Video - Claim)

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Posted on Oct. 25 2019, Not revised or updated. It agrees with my claim saying we should still learn cursive handwriting in schools. The source is youtube.com. news channel. URL domain is biased, WXYZ-TV|Channel 7. No grammar errors in the video. It teaches you why we dont learn cursive anymore.

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Should schools be required to teach cursive handwriting?