This shift in curriculum sparks yearly debates over whether or not the skill of writing in cursive remains relevant. State Sen. Jean Leising, R-Oldenburg, said she thinks it does.
For this reason, Leising authored Senate Bill 73. This would reverse the 2011 Department of Education decision that made cursive instruction optional in Indiana elementary schools.
The bill passed the Senate last week.
“Our children should not be denied the opportunity to learn such a valuable skill,” Leising said in a press release. “Medical professionals have found that proficient handwriting is linked to adult-like thought processing and higher test scores. Much of history is written in cursive, and it is important that we give our children the tools and skills they need to reach their full potential.”
Jennifer Garl, a second grade teacher at Rogers Elementary School, said she agrees cursive is important.
When the new standards were set in 2011, she and her fellow teachers decided they would continue teaching cursive even though it was no longer required.
“We felt like kids at least needed to be able to read it,” Garl said. “So we still teach them all of the letters, but we no longer require all of their writing to be done in cursive.”
Garl said she found it interesting that some of her students who have trouble with fine motor skills are actually much better at the fluid cursive strokes than the choppy printing movements.
Iris Hatfield, author of the New American Cursive Penmanship Program, said the development of fine motor skills is only one of many unexpected benefits to learning cursive.
It has been shown to improve the neural connections in the brain, to stimulate the brain in ways that printing and typing cannot and to help students develop self discipline, Hatfield said.
Writing helps students remember things better than typing, Hatfield said.
Cursive is faster than printing and also can help students become better readers and spellers because they see words as whole units instead of individual letters, she said.
Hatfield noted that cursive is more individualized than printing because it allows writers to be creative and artistic.
This is also why signatures written in cursive are harder to forge.
“You look at your grandparents’ writing and historical writing.” Hatfield said. “They had such beautiful penmanship and that’s because they were not taught to print until much later on in their educations.”
After watching handwriting deteriorate throughout her 40 years as a handwriting coach, Hatfield said she is very happy to see legislators like Leising beginning to recognize all of the benefits of cursive.
Leising’s bill will now move to the House Education Committee, which will determine whether or not it will be heard in the House.
