From penmanship to decline
For most of the 20th century, American children spent up to 45 minutes a day practising cursive in dedicated pen-manship classes. The skill was introduced after the early grades of print writing and was once seen as a marker of character. By the 1980s the daily allotment had dropped to 30-60 minutes per week, and the rise of standards-based curricula and computer keyboards further pushed cursive to the margins.
The adoption of the Common Core standards between 2009 and 2014 cemented the shift, as the new framework prioritised typing skills over traditional transcription.
Legislative push back
In the early 2010s a wave of state laws began to reverse the trend. North Carolina passed the first cursive mandate in 2013, requiring students to read and write in cursive by the end of fifth grade. By 2015, fourteen additional states had introduced similar requirements, and by 2026 more than twenty-five states, including Pennsylvania, Florida, California and Michigan, required cursive instruction.
Lawmakers argue that reading historical documents, preserving family letters and even preventing AI-generated assignments depend on the ability to read and write in cursive. A Michigan representative highlighted a personal story in which a granddaughter could read her late father's handwritten letter only because her school still taught the skill.
Research on benefits
Scientific studies offer mixed but intriguing findings. A 2020 Norwegian experiment involving twelve adults and twelve pre-teens used brain-imaging to compare cursive writing, drawing and typing. Researchers observed that cursive activated neural pathways linked to learning and memory, and the technique showed promise for students with dyslexia or dysgraphia.
Other research points to improved writing fluency and, in some cases, faster writing speed. First-graders in Portugal who learned cursive produced longer "bursts" of text, a pattern attributed to the uninterrupted flow of cursive strokes. A 2019 study of 141 first-graders found that those taught cursive read better by the end of the school year than peers who did not.
Challenges ahead
Despite the legislative enthusiasm, practical obstacles remain. Many current teachers never learned cursive themselves, and dedicating roughly 70 minutes a week to instruction competes with crowded curricula. Moreover, the scientific evidence specifically supporting cursive over printed handwriting is still limited.
I am a product of this system, learning cursive in third grade and winning awards for my excellent cursive penmanship from the retired nuns who once worked in my Catholic school,
explains Mary Jean Tecce DeCarlo, a clinical professor of literacy studies at Drexel University. She notes that while handwriting in general benefits learning, the added value of cursive loops versus printed letters is not yet definitively proven.
As states continue to debate the role of cursive, the next few years will reveal whether the skill secures a permanent place in the modern curriculum or remains a nostalgic footnote.