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Learning to read and write cursive was for practically every American schoolchild.

Until the early 20th century, children in the U.S. were generally taught to write in , rather than the print writing typically taught to young children today. Some people at the time  based on the quality of their cursive.

In the first half of the 20th century, penmanship was often taught as a distinct subject in American elementary schools, where children could spend as much as 45 minutes a day on  and practice.

Students during these years generally learned print in kindergarten, first and second grade. Cursive was typically introduced in third or a later grade, in part because some that writing in print for young children to learn and aligned with the fonts they found when reading.

I am a product of this system, in third grade and winning awards for my excellent cursive penmanship from the retired nuns who once worked in my Catholic school. Now, I am a , who researches reading and writing.

My experience is no longer typical, though, over the past few decades. Some states and schools, though, are reconsidering the value of cursive for today鈥檚 students.

A shift away from cursive

By the 1980s, the instructional time dedicated to cursive instruction in some schools .

And the time allotted kept falling, in part because of the 1990s standards-based movement, which .

The called for data analysis and probability to be incorporated into mathematics education beginning in the early grades, including kindergarten. The social studies standards, meanwhile, reflected a broader approach to history that brought greater attention to figures such as , the in the early 1300s.

At the same time, computers , making the ability to type on keyboards seem like a necessary skill.

Cursive began to seem antiquated.

The Common Core state standards, , were adopted in some fashion by 45 states between 2009 and 2014. These standards called for kids to learn how to type on keyboards, ensuring that whatever valuable teaching time was left for transcription would be spent on .

A return to cursive?

It did not take long for the pendulum to begin to swing back in favor of cursive in the early 2010s.

Framed as a back-to-basics issue, North Carolina passed the first cursive law in 2013. It required students to read and .

The law also required children to memorize their multiplication tables.

By 2015, 14 other states had some kind of .

As of 2026,, including Pennsylvania, Florida, California and Michigan, .

Lawmakers cite several reasons for mandating cursive in schools.

argue, for example, that an informed citizenry needs to be able to read historical documents, which are often written in cursive script.

In 2025, a Michigan representative suggested that reading cursive was also essential to preserving family history. Her granddaughter was able to read a letter that her deceased father, the lawmaker鈥檚 son, had written in cursive only because her school .

A California assembly member had more modern realities in mind, suggesting that cursive could be used to ensure students aren鈥檛 using artificial intelligence to .

Benefits of cursive

Being able to write in cursive can have benefits for learners.

A 2020 study conducted in Norway hooked up 12 adults and 12 preteens to brain-imaging devices while they .

They found that writing in cursive activates the brain waves and neural pathways used for learning and for memory. Learning to write in cursive is also associated with , a neurological learning disability that makes writing difficult.

Other studies have shown cursive鈥檚 impact on writing fluency and quality. that , while other that have a speed advantage.

First graders in Portugal who were taught cursive wrote in longer 鈥渂ursts,鈥� which the .

There鈥檚 even research suggesting that cursive gives an early boost to students鈥� reading skills, not just their composition skills. that children taught cursive read better by the end of the school year than classmates who weren鈥檛.

learning cursive trains the brain to process letters more effectively.

Cursive in today鈥檚 world

Not everyone is convinced cursive deserves a comeback tour.

For starters, the science is shakier than cursive鈥檚 champions let on. There鈥檚 that handwriting beats typing for learning and memory. What鈥檚 much less clear is over ordinary print.

It is possible that much of the recent brain research getting was done on kids printing their letters, not looping them together.

Still, teaching cursive in today鈥檚 schools is not necessarily simple.

Many of today鈥檚 teachers, and many of tomorrow鈥檚, never learned cursive themselves, which means states are now asking educators to teach a skill they don鈥檛 have. Then there鈥檚 the question of time. Teaching cursive properly can a week, as children learn to master the skill. How does this fit into busy school days? Also, not every kid is .

Just ask any teacher who鈥檚 tried to get a room full of 7-year-olds excited about learning how to properly form a capital G in cursive.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

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