Rediscovering Cursive in a Digital World
Cursive is one of those old-fashioned skills that used to be essential in education. These days, with rare exceptions, it is hardly taught at all. Like phonics—something once foundational—cursive has become so rare that many people do not even realize what has been lost. If you ask most kids today, they might not even know what cursive is, let alone how to write it. In this three-part blog series, I will discuss how it is being rediscovered, its benefits for children, and why it disappeared.
So, what exactly is cursive? To put it simply, cursive is a way of writing by hand, where you join the letters together to form words. The pen stays on the paper, gliding from one letter to the next, unlike block printing, where you lift your pen after each letter. Once you get the hang of it, cursive is actually much faster than printing. It made perfect sense in an age when people wrote letters and notes by hand. But now, most people rarely put pen to paper in our world of emails and texts. Even among college students, I've noticed that many struggle with legible handwriting, and some never mastered basic printing.
Despite how it might seem, there are still good reasons to learn cursive. In fact, recent research from education, neuroscience, and psychology fields has highlighted fascinating benefits:
Writing in cursive activates neural pathways that connect both sides of the brain.
It can be especially important for young kids developing motor skills and learning to read and write.
When cursive is part of their learning, they often pick up other skills more quickly and confidently.
So even though cursive may seem like a relic of the past, a growing body of evidence suggests it is a skill worth preserving. In the next post, I will share more about the specific benefits of cursive and why it remains relevant, even in our digital age.
