Julie Flack, a parent and educator, often writes cursive on the board when teaching her eighth grade students.Although she learned cursive in the second grade, her students can’t read cursive at all.
Cursive handwriting in the classroom has become an untaught skill in most schools.
“Cursive writing is a lost art in the eighth grade,” Flack, who teaches social studies, said. “When we look at the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, they have no idea what they’re reading.”
Since Flack’s students can’t read cursive, they have trouble reading primary source documents, which she has to translate for students.
However, Flack said if she had the time to teach her students cursive, she would.
“There is zero time to do much (of) anything,” Flack said. “I have to cram about 400 years of history in the space of nine months. Time is a hot commodity in education and unfortunately, if it’s not on the test, it’s not going to get covered.”
Although there isn’t much time for older students to learn cursive, Handwriting Without Tears (HWT), a handwriting curriculum for pre-k to fifth grade, is meant to take only 10 to 15 minutes of class time.
At recent HWT workshops in Indianapolis, attendees learned developmental strategies of learning cursive, hands-on activities to teach their children/students and different approaches on teaching handwriting.
Denise Donica, occupational therapist and national presenter of HWT, believes cursive is a good alternative for students who have trouble with print and also believes it has additional advantages.
“(Cursive) handwriting is an important skill,” Donica said. “It is an important developmental skill. If we remove that completely, children will be missing out on a stage of development.”
According to research from HWT, handwriting develops eye-hand coordination skills and boosts brain development. Additionally, with a growing digital age and increase of technology in the classroom, the instruction of handwriting is becoming less important.
“If I were to ask a student to write a paragraph, they would be more likely to give me information by typing than by handwriting,” Flack said. “With the changeover to technology, we see a lot of things going to the wayside.”
Donica agrees and believes although technology is important in the classroom, handwriting is still a skill students need to learn.
Students who do not learn cursive also cannot write their signature when it is needed on legal documents.
“Should they just learn their signature? Maybe, but then they can only read their signature,” Donica said. “I’ve watched people print their name when they were required to sign because they didn’t know how.”
With more benefits than drawbacks, Flack believes cursive should still be taught.
“I really think it should be a requirement,” Flack said. “We’re doing our future a huge disservice by not teaching handwriting in early grades.”
