Should Schools Teach Cursive Writing?

A bill has been introduced in the New Jersey Legislature which would require elementary schools to teach their students how to write in cursive, the flowing, loopy writing style that was considered standard several decades ago.

In recent years, many schools have chosen to stop teaching how to write in cursive.

Angela McKnight, who represents New Jersey’s 31st District, says that learning cursive writing skills is important because “In some cases, children are entering middle school without knowing how to sign their own name in cursive.”

McKnight said she is concerned that without being taught cursive writing, children will grow up without some basic skills needed in life. “How will our students ever know how to read a scripted font on a word document, or even sign the back of a check, if they never learn to read and write in cursive?” asked McKnight.

Some say that cursive writing can be beneficial to people’s security, because a signature written in cursive is more difficult to forge. Some studies have also shown that people learn more when taking handwritten notes rather than on a computer. Cursive writing is important for such notetaking to be practical.

The bill is now heading to the state’s education committee for review.

What do you think? Is it important for our children to be taught how to write in cursive?

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13 COMMENTS

  1. Yes! Everything is becoming a dying art. Computers are taking away our ability to be humans. They write for us, read for us, do research for us… Is there anything left for us to actually know how to do? Let’s keep those brains active & sharp.

  2. Cursive writing is not just about looks, security, and signature. There is a lot to learn from the flow of the writing.
    1) You use eye hand coordination
    2) You must plan ahead for you next letter. does it start with an undercurve/ overcurve and put that into how you’ll end your current letter.
    School is not just about the book, but rather about building the brain!!
    Similar to some sports there are skills to be learnt even if you won’t use them for what they were taught.

  3. no question in my mind that teaching cursive writing is important for many reasons. It has a huge effect on brain development and helps students build fine motor skills. It leads to greater engagement and retention. It has been found it improves spelling, text construction, and graphic motor skills. Typing doesn’t have the same effect on the brain. besides all this, humans are changing to robots, this might become quite dangerous because their feelings will numb totally, and compassion will disappear, but this is a whole other discussion

  4. R Shriber is right on the money.

    This is not a question to put out to the public, who, well-meaning though they may be, are for the most part not trained in education.

    We would not ask the general public to vote whether or not baseball players should do stretches or drink vitamin water or wear polarized sunglasses.

    Cursive writing is faster than printing. It hones fine motor skills, stimulates the neural connections in the brain, has been shown to improve language skills, and retain information.

    Many of our schools are still teaching cursive and it would behoove the entire community to do so as well

  5. Teach it in first grade like in Europe, when they first learn how to write!
    Don’t make them learn how to write 2 times! It makes it so much harder the way it’s tought now!
    Printing comes on it’s own later on.

  6. No, skip it, its a totally useless waste of time. Cursive writing is an outcome of writing with quills and fountain pens and other ‘inky’ pens, today when most people use ballpoint pens, there is no benefit to this style of writing.
    Just because we learned something in school does not mean our kids have to waste time learning an outdated method they will never use.

  7. It should definitely be taught but it should be taught the European way not the frum American way that is used which totally doesn’t make sense!!

  8. I work the election , 90% of the people coming into vote scribble . They say that is their signature, you cannot read one letter. I wondered what they were taught in school.

  9. hesh stop trying to be soo yeshivish. yes its important. Rav Gifter ZTL said you have to strive for the “A”s and in english also. No reason on earth to be an am ha a retz in this

Comments are closed.