dpAs the 2026-2027 school year gets underway, so does the ongoing debate about cursive in the classroom, though this year seems a clear win for those of us who appreciate the intellectual and aesthetic powers of the handwritten word. According to neaToday, twenty-seven states now have laws mandating or encouraging cursive instruction in public schools – up from only 14 a decade ago.
Naysayers argue that while handwriting has indeed demonstrated value in the realms of information retention and efficiency, particularly in elementary school, there really isn’t any compelling research that suggests cursive is superior to printing. To the extreme, why the push for any type of handwriting in an increasingly digital world?
For young children, it seems handwriting of any sort is better than typing on a computer for improving spelling accuracy, letter recognition, memory, and recall. And the mere act of shaping letters encourages a deeper familiarity with words. Comparative studies, according to Jim Hewitt and Nidhi Sachdeva in The Science of Learning, reveal that handwriting is superior to keyboarding for fostering letter recognition and recall of words, in addition to improving spelling accuracy.
But when it comes to cognitive effects, the research is inconsistent. Overall, it seems cursive has no huge benefit over printing and might just be an additional “to-do” on teachers’ lists of tasks and tests – except in the area of fine motor skills. Here cursive has an edge because the fluid connected strokes encourage smooth hand movement. In conclusion, efficiency and legibility are the overriding goals.
Handwriting vs. AI
There are so many other benefits of handwriting that can’t be quantified. For one, anything that gets kids off keyboards for any length of time is good, and handwriting practice does just that. Real paper. A real writing implement. Not a screen in sight. For that alone, we should give it a standing ovation. Cursive also gets an A-plus in the history section, since historical documents require a knowledge of cursive to decipher.
Fountain pen on an antique handwritten letter.
So, too, some consider cursive an art form, and back in the day “penmen” created lovely, flowing scripts during the Golden Age of Penmanship that often had their names attached to their particular style. Platt Rogers Spencer, 1800 – 1864, for example, is considered the father of American penmanship, and his flowing cursive (Spencerian) became the standard for American business and government correspondence. Later, Austin Norman Palmer, 1860 – 1927) had a great influence on the handwriting in the American educational systems (Palmer Method), and many people of a certain age will remember the daily handwriting drills that formed part of their school days. Palmer provided a simplified form of writing for students and business people on the heels of the more ornate Spencerian script. There are other notable penman, each contributing distinct influence on the art of writing.
Now, faced with AI at every turn we take, handwriting again steps in on the educational front. Teachers are bringing back in-class handwritten essays and exams to prevent students from outsourcing their writing and critical thinking to AI chatbots, according to Wired magazine. In an era where AI can quickly provide near-perfect final drafts, handwriting provides teachers insight about a student’s true skill level.
Writing, after all, requires thinking, and critical thinking is what education is all about.
This article was originally published on Forbes.com
