Cursive slowly scribbled out of N.J. curriculums as computer skills gain value in schools | NJ.com:

Cursive slowly scribbled out of N.J. curriculums as computer skills gain value in schools

Published: Sunday, June 17, 2012, 7:00 AM

The bulletin board at the front of Melissa Balzano’s classroom in West Orange is decorated with hand-written lists her students wrote in September, expressing their "Hopes and Dreams for Third Grade."
For at least half the children in Balzano’s class at Mount Pleasant Elementary School, learning cursive topped the list.

"It’s fancy writing," said Naomi Toms, 9. Cursive was once a mainstay of elementary schools, where children practiced the "tripod" pencil grip and the looping strokes of the letters. But these days little classroom time is spent teaching cursive writing, crowded out of the curriculum by the demands of an increasingly complex world.

Beyond that, some educators are asking whether the current generation of kids even needs to know how to write in longhand, given the reality of a world ruled by the keyboard.

The national Common Core State Standards, a set of academic standards adopted by New Jersey