The Joys and Benefits of Cursive Writing

“What is this? I am not accepting this paper until you rewrite it in cursive!” This is what I heard from my old teacher telling my buddy who didn’t take the ‘cursive only’ rule seriously. I attended MMI, a private military school that instilled many values in their students; including, the aforementioned ‘cursive only’ rule. I didn’t really understand why they made us write in cursive, I actually hated it! “Let me write the way I want to write!” is something I always dreamed about yelling at my teacher, yet I still went along with it. After graduating from MMI I moved on to high school where I would find myself exclusively writing in cursive, it was now a part of me. For those who are not familiar with this form of handwriting cursive is a style where all the letters in a word are connected. Fun fact: cursive is also known as script or longhand. The Common Core Standards no longer require elementary students to learn cursive, and some schools are dropping the teaching of cursive all together, dismissing it as an “ancient skill.” However, certain studies have come up, proving that doing so might not be the best idea. Teaching handwriting, or cursive, is an important thing schools should be teaching children, especially in our modern era.

There are so many benefits to making sure that cursive remains in the curriculum. Teaching handwriting helps children with development, and how to learn and think better then if they had not been taught handwriting. According to William Klemm, D.V.M., Ph.D “Scientists are discovering that learning cursive is an important tool for cognitive development.” Cognitive abilities are the brain-based skills we need to do any task from the simplest movements to the most complex prob...

... middle of paper ...

...xia. Dyslexia is a language processing disorder that can hinder reading, writing, spelling and sometimes even speaking. Students with dyslexia, have a difficult time with writing in regular print because many of the letters look the same. On the other hand, cursive writing gives each letter a very distinctive look. This gives dyslexic students an alternate method of writing that can reduce their dyslexic trends and make them more confident in their abilities to write. Alec Falconer a student diagnosed with dyslexia really believes cursive helped him in school, He says, “After [learning cursive], my handwriting, my spelling, the way I put sentences together has definitely improved a lot,” he said. Cursive therapy is a common dyslexia treatment and should not be reserved for the parents that can afford lessons, it should be taught in public schools for everyone.