Public schools and the loss of cursive handwriting
Have you wondered why your children aren’t learning cursive handwriting in public school? If so, you are not alone. The real question is whether it is helping or hurting them.
The Causes
There are several factors that have led to the loss of cursive handwriting in public schools. First, technology and the ever-increasing number of devices in the classroom have placed the focus on typing instead of handwriting. Second, the declining quality of our public school systems have caused them to focus on subjects that can be tested. Higher test scores bring in more money and justify taxes and eSPLOSTS. This is particularly true if a school district is a charter system that must demonstrate continued improvement to remain a charter entity.1
Skills such as cursive handwriting, which are difficult to test and quantify, have been dropped. Third, our public schools have distanced themselves from our history and roots, sometimes not wanting to read the original source documents because they refer to God. In turn, this discounts the need to read the cursive writing in our nation’s founding documents, much less write in cursive ourselves, which has long been considered an art and a stress-reducer. Yet, by failing to pass on our cursive handwriting, what are our children losing?
The Benefits of Cursive Handwriting for the Young
For young children, one of the benefits of leaning cursive is that it follows the child’s early natural movements. Just give a child a crayon and paper and watch them draw swirling circles all over the page. This is one of the reasons why many Montessori 2 programs teach children cursive before they teach printing – it follows the child’s natural movements. Plus, in cursive it is much easier to distinguish the letters “b” and “d,” and “p” and “q.” In the natural world, a chair is a chair whether it is facing forward or backward, sitting up or laying down. Yet, printed letters and keys on a keyboard are not the same, and this can be difficult for some children to learn. Cursive, on the other hand, helps clarify these differences. One of my favorite things about our children’s Montessori school were the cursive letters made from sandpaper. The children traced them with their tiny fingers, delicately practicing the flow before they moved to pencils.
The Benefits of Notetaking on Learning
There is scientific evidence that writing rather than typing class notes during a lecture helps student learning, despite the fact that those typing had longer and more detailed notes. In 2014, three studies were conducted at Princeton University to compare the effectiveness of notetaking using longhand writing versus typing 3
The researchers, Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer discovered that “students who took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who took notes longhand.” The flaw with typing was that the note takers “tended to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words,” which was detrimental to learning. Handwriting involves deeper processing than typing, and nuances in writing are more easily retained.
In other words, the rush for digital convenience may have significant cognitive costs.
The Benefits for the Nation
Finally, our failure to teach cursive handwriting to our children places them one more step away from our nation’s history, including our founding documents. It will be much more difficult to adhere to them when they cannot read them for themselves, and must rely on others to interpret them? It makes one wonder about our public schools, the move from history to social studies, the move away from reading our founding documents because they refer to God, and now the move away from cursive handwriting and being able to even read them. It makes one wonder about our public schools, and whether they are fulfilling their intended purpose.
What Parents Can Do
For parents who care, you can write to your local school board requesting change or attend a school board meeting and speak during public comment. Of course, you can also teach your child at home with an inexpensive cursive handwriting kit . . . and by all means, make it fun!
Kelly Himes Brolly is an attorney, author, consultant, and the Managing Member of Double Umbrella Publications, LLC, d/b/a Double Umbrella Consulting. For more information see Kelly’s book, “Laws, Rules, and Rights: A Guide to Protecting Children in Public Schools,” Double Umbrella Publications, LLC (2023). To order Kelly’s book on Amazon, go here. To hear Kelly’s podcast on ThinQ Media titled “The Informed Parent,” go here. To learn more about parental rights and public schools in all 50 states, go here or to www.doubleumbrellapublications.com.
1 In Georgia, there are 180 school districts. The vast majority (178 school districts) are with charter school systems or strategic waiver school systems, which are another form of charter system. Only two school districts, Webster County School District and Buford City School District, are traditional public school systems that operate under all the state’s school laws in Title 20.
2 There are two accrediting bodies of Montessori programs: Association Montessori Internationale (AMI), and the American Montessori Society (AMS). AMI programs tend to be the purists that teach cursive handwriting beginning in the early years.
3 Mueller, Pam A, and Daniel M Oppenheimer. “The pen is mightier than the keyboard: advantages of longhand over laptop note taking.” Psychological science vol. 25,6 (2014): 1159-68. doi:10.1177/0956797614524581.
