Cursive Seemed to Go the Way of Quills and Parchment. Now It’s Coming Back.
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 CONTINUE READING: Cursive Seemed to Go the Way of Quills and Parchment. Now It’s Coming Back. - The New York Times
