Is cursive writing a lost art? Do students need to learn it?
Whether you call it handwriting, cursive writing, or script, learning the skill of cursive handwriting in school is no longer a standard practice. Following the implementation of the Common Core Standards in 2010, many schools omitted cursive handwriting from their curricula in favour of more technology-focused pursuits, such as keyboarding skills. With laptops becoming more prevalent in classrooms, this move made sense.
The Cursive Comeback
But, after more than a decade, learning cursive handwriting is making a comeback in the classroom. More than half of U.S. States have reimplemented cursive instruction for students.
Some of the reasons behind this comeback are:
- Overreliance on technology
- Cognitive benefits
- Historical factors
- Fine Motor Skills Development
Technology & Handwriting
Today’s students are digital natives, having grown up technologically fluent. But their digital fluency comes with a price, including negative effects on mental health, declining attention spans, and decreased academic outcomes.
Learning cursive handwriting can help reverse some of the effects of being a digital native, including:
- Digital Amnesia: Typing is passive, leading to lower retention, whereas writing by hand is active, forcing the brain to engage more in forming the letters, which increases retention.
- Increasing Attention: Rather than typing mindlessly, cursive writing requires focus, dedication, and attention to detail, which can help rebuild deep thinking skills.
- Individuality and Personality: Reading printed text is impersonal, relaying no information about the writer. Students can’t identify their friends or parents via a typed message the way they can with a handwritten note.
Read More: Social Media Habits for Students
Access to History
Another factor driving the cursive comeback is access to historical and legal documents, as well as intergenerational communication.
All American historical documents are written in cursive, including the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. Having an entire generation of students who cannot read important historical documents leaves a gap in access.
According to historian Drew Gilpin Faust, when we can’t read historical documents, history must be presented indirectly, which limits our understanding of how the world works and separates us from understanding our origins and meanings.
Cognitive Benefits
Research shows that writing by hand has enormous cognitive benefits for students. The act of putting pen to paper increases electrical activity across various brain regions when compared to using a keyboard.
Writing by hand engages several senses:
- Movement
- Vision
- Sensory processing
- Memory
While the cognitive benefits of handwriting apply to both printing and cursive alike, cursive writing has an additional benefit not linked to printing: fine motor skill development.
Read More: Boost Memory and Learning with Handwriting
Fine Motor Skill Development
Another driver of the return to teaching cursive in the classroom is educators’ observation of an overall decline in students’ fine motor skill development. A UK study showed that 77% of educators report that students are having a harder time with basic fine motor skills.
Teachers notice that students struggle to:
- Hold pens and pencils correctly
- Use scissors correctly
- Print letters legibly
- Maintain hand strength
How Does Learning Cursive Address This?
Writing by hand forces the brain to develop coordinated, fluid muscle movements that are more complex than those required for printing alone.
- Continuous flow: The hand never leaves the page in cursive, helping to build motor planning and anticipation skills, meaning planning for the next letter while writing the current one.
- More control: Cursive is more fluid for students because it has fewer stops and starts and maintains more consistent pressure.
- Simpler spacing: Many students struggle with crowding while printing, both the words themselves and the spaces between the words, because cursive connects the letters.
Should Students Use Cursive in Class?
While technology is a way of life for students, what happens when it isn’t available, and students have to rely on the basics—reading, writing, and math—without support from tech?
In every classroom, there is still a time when handwriting and cursive, especially, is beneficial:
- Writing Essays: Cursive is more automatic than printing because there is less stopping and starting, and it tends to lead to more creative expression in essays.
- Faster Production: If time is of the essence during a test, then cursive is quicker. But to get a point across, neatness counts! Student writing needs to be legible, or they can lose grades.
- Spelling Tests: research shows that students who learn cursive rather than print score better on reading and spelling tests because the continuity of cursive writing forces writers to think of words as wholes rather than parts.
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Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in 2017 and updated in 2026.
