The first week of second grade, I told the girl across the street that I would be learning “grown-up writing.” She was a kindergartener and satisfyingly impressed. In truth, having just mastered reading and writing print letters, the idea of learning to decipher the connected slants and loops of cursive made me anxious.
In a 2022 article for The Atlantic, Harvard professor Drew Gilpin Faust recounts her shock at learning students in her American history course could not read handwritten documents, mostly letters, from the Civil War. It wasn’t because 19th century script had more flourishes, which it did. No, her students told her it they couldn’t read cursive at all, adding “of course.” Faust felt like a “Rip Van Winkle confronting a transformed world.”
Cursive exited most public school educations in 2010 when it was not included in the roll out of Common Core, a federal K-12 guideline of English and math standards many states adopted. As a result, most Americans in Generations Z and Alpha never learned to write, nor read, cursive. (So uncommon is the ability to read cursive today, the National Archives seeks volunteers to transcribe historical documents from cursive to print.)
This is unfortunate on many levels, not the least of which is the acquisition of reading skills and comprehension, which might seem odd at first blush. But according to the University of California Riverside, ample research suggests that “learning cursive can enhance brain development, particularly in areas related to language, memory, and fine motor skills. When students engage in the intricate movements required for cursive writing, this activates different parts of the brain compared to typing or printing.”
This is not new information. When my eldest child, now 31, was first diagnosed with dyslexia, the professionals handling his remediation told me to sign him up for occupational therapy. OT focuses on fine motor skills — picking up small objects with the forefinger and thumb, buttoning clothes and properly holding a pencil. I was told an early indicator of a learning disability is weak hand strength. Furthermore, if a child with a learning disability builds hand strength, their reading skills improve because of the connection between physical activity and the parts of the brain that manage reading.
When Google began giving laptops to public schools, few (if any) asked if that was a good idea. Kindergarteners in Akron Public Schools are given a Google Chromebook the first week of class and are expected to take a placement test on them a few weeks later. Never mind cursive, students spend little time ever writing with paper and pencil and never build hand strength. Each year when I proctor the Ohio State Test to third graders, they complain that their hands hurt after writing one or two sentences with a pencil for the writing section. I tutor a group of APS third graders in phonics four days a week just before lunch. Each chapter of the program we use includes a short spelling test. One day, one of the students attempted to write his answers in something not unlike cursive. “Would you like me to teach you cursive during lunchtime?” I asked. He accept my offer and the other students begged me to teach them, too.
I thought it would last a week, maybe two, before they became bored with additional learning, but no. I have spent lunch with them every day since we returned from winter break in January. I contacted a teacher at Spring Garden Waldorf School where they never dropped cursive. She told me to break the lower case letters into four groups of shapes: waves, loops, cups and hills.
The students bring their lunches to my room at noon. We eat and visit, leaving us 15 to 20 minutes to learn and practice cursive before they go to recess at 12:30. It took the better part of three months to introduce all the lower case letters. I’d put them on the board, then show them on lined paper and, if necessary, helped them with hand-over-hand instruction. In April, we began learning how to connect cursive letters to create words.
I stopped writing in cursive long ago. Showing my students felt like getting on a favorite bicycle rediscovered at the back of a barn. The muscle memory from when I was first taught in 1972 remains. My young students discuss without embarrassment which letters they find beautiful, such as “j” and “k”. One of them told me with all sincerity that he’d come to school on Saturday and Sunday if we could do cursive.
Just as Buddhist monks practice calligraphy as a form of meditation, practicing cursive seems a form of mindfulness training for my students, and also for me. The creation of flowing letters calmly focuses the mind as all other thoughts recede. Cursive club is easily the favorite part of my workday.
One of my cursive club boys turned 9 last month. I found a blank card and wrote in cursive on both inside pages. He slowly deciphered the words out loud with great pride. This past week, we made Mother’s Day cards, each child excited to show their mothers the handwriting they’ve begun to master. And should the moms find it difficult to read the sentiments written in cursive their children, unlike Professor Faust’s Harvard students, will be able to help them.
This was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on Sunday, May 11, 2025.
Whoopsie Piggle 