cursive instruction – Cursive returns to classrooms and clubs across the US, reigniting a debate over time, evidence, and how students learn in an AI and keyboard era.
Cursive handwriting is having an unexpected comeback, with students in after-school clubs and state mandates bringing back the “loopy” pages many adults remember.
At Holmes Middle School in Alexandria. Virginia. teacher Sherisse Kenerson started a cursive club when she realized her students couldn’t read her cursive writing on the board.. For multilingual educators like Kenerson, the moment wasn’t abstract.. Students didn’t recognize the script; they just stared.. So she built a space where letter connections—and the patience they require—became the point. not a forgotten requirement from earlier school years.
The club’s popularity has spread far beyond its school halls.. Local coverage and national attention helped lift it into a wider conversation. and Kenerson says she’s received fan mail from retirees and teachers. along with messages from educators in multiple states.. Her experience reflects a broader US shift: after the Common Core era dropped cursive in many places. more states began requiring cursive instruction. often justified by nostalgia and perceived learning benefits.
Yet experts are not united.. Mark Warschauer. a professor of education at the University of California. Irvine. argues that teaching cursive does not show unique cognitive gains beyond handwriting in general.. In his view. classroom time is too valuable to spend on a format when students can already rely on keyboards. voice-to-text. and spelling supports.. His concern speaks to a familiar policy dilemma: if schools must choose. should they invest in skills most likely to translate into daily learning—especially when digital tools are everywhere?
The counterargument is less about choosing handwriting versus technology, and more about preparing students to be flexible.. Shawn Datchuk. a special education professor at the University of Iowa. says classrooms increasingly reflect “multimodal” note-taking—tablets. styluses. typing. and handwriting all coexisting.. In that environment, Datchuk argues students still benefit from being able to handwrite clearly, including cursive.. His point also turns toward the limits of digital assistance: even with spell-check and artificial intelligence. students need spelling knowledge to use those tools effectively.
Datchuk and colleagues have reviewed studies on cursive instruction and found preliminary evidence that cursive may help with spelling.. But the research base comes with caveats. including older handwriting tools used in some experiments and gaps in how instruction was described.. Still, the mechanism behind any potential benefit is intuitive to teachers: cursive requires careful attention to how letters connect.. That continuous flow can make students slow down, track form more deliberately, and practice spelling through motion.
There is also a human layer to the debate that goes beyond test scores.. Kenerson and other supporters describe cursive as therapeutic for some learners. including students with dyslexia or special needs—claims often grounded in observation rather than large. definitive trials.. California assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva, who introduced a cursive mandate in 2023, has said constituent feedback has been positive.. In practice. that means lawmakers are hearing stories from families and teachers who experience cursive not as an obsolete relic. but as a tool that can restore confidence and competence.
A generational divide keeps surfacing in these accounts.. Datchuk recalls how his reading began long before formal instruction for handwriting: his 8-year-old son still passes birthday cards written by a grandmother back to him to decode.. For some children, cursive is not a choice—it’s an unfamiliar language.. Antonio Benavides. an 11-year-old in Kenerson’s club. started by questioning the need for cursive after hearing it was “for” something he didn’t understand.. But he stuck with practice, and he says his penmanship improved.. When the classroom goes quiet. he notices the “nice” sound of a pencil moving—an ordinary detail. but one that captures why handwriting advocates continue to insist that the skill matters.
Still. cursive debates are not new. and Steve Graham. a Regents Professor at Arizona State University’s College for Teaching and Learning Innovation. cautions against treating headlines like a verdict.. Graham says the “death of handwriting or cursive” story has been circulating for decades.. He suggests that differences between cursive and print may be less dramatic than some coverage implies. and that the most important issue is time spent teaching children to write well—whatever form schools prioritize.
The return of cursive. then. appears less like a retreat from modern literacy and more like a negotiation over what schools should protect: basic writing fluency. spelling foundations. and handwriting legibility in a world where text is increasingly typed.. For students like Conrad Thompson. being able to read a teacher’s worksheet-sized Declaration of Independence printout can turn a policy debate into something personal and immediate—pride. recognition. and the satisfaction of understanding what’s on the page.
Back in Kenerson’s club, that payoff is simple.. Halle asks whether the students will return next week.. The question lands like a vote of confidence—less about whether cursive will dominate classrooms. and more about whether children still want the chance to learn a skill that makes writing feel readable. controllable. and. for some. quietly enjoyable.
AI Skills That Last: Computational Thinking in Schools
Sentences Of The Week: What Education Must Learn About AI, Belonging & Reading