Most Americans recall learning cursive in elementary school, carefully tracing each letter over and over until they eventually developed a rhythm. But what was once a foundational skill and rite of passage is now in danger of disappearing, and with it, a crucial piece of our cultural heritage. Cursive refers to writing with looped, interconnected letters or characters, and appears across almost every language, alphabet, and writing system. This writing style has historical roots stretching back to Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics [1]. By approximately 100 BC, cursive forms of the Latin alphabet had emerged, outdating the development of the English language by centuries [2]. Cursive has never been a mandated educational requirement, but for centuries, it was the preferred form of handwriting. The popularity of cursive in America rose with the popularity of fountain pens and gradually declined with the rise of typewriters and word processors [3]. Cursive is a dying art form, and as technology progresses, cursive will continue to become more obsolete. However, cursive has a valuable place in American public schools and should be mandated by the federal government. Cursive’s significance should not be based on its usefulness, but instead on its cultural and historical significance, along with its ability to strengthen children’s fine motor skills and language development. 

The federal adoption of “Common Core” learning standards in 2010 cut cursive’s respected place in public elementary education. Common Core developed a framework with a strict focus on math and reading benchmarks, giving educators little time to teach any skills that fell outside these standards. In this federal curriculum plan, keyboarding replaced cursive. California has become the most recent state to reinstate cursive in the classroom, joining 23 other states that hold some sort of cursive curriculum requirement [4]. Interestingly, there exists a clear geographic trend, with most states in the Midwest, Rockies, and New England not having any cursive requirement, while every state in the South and Appalachia does. This most likely reflects a stronger regional emphasis on tradition and cultural identity. The recent wave of states restoring cursive instruction could signal a growing recognition of cursive’s educational value.

Unlike the Southern focus on tradition, California justified its protection of cursive by citing neuroscience research that demonstrates how cursive strengthens the part of students’ brains responsible for language development [5]. Research has definitively shown that learning letters through handwriting activates areas of the brain that are not activated by typing [6]. Other evidence  also shows the type of handwriting matters. Psychology researchers used a longitudinal study to find that cursive writing activates different parts of the brain than print writing. Because of the fluidity of cursive, there is a greater engagement of fine motor skills and motor planning. Despite placing some extra stress on the brain due to its increased demand for dexterity, cursive reduces the overall cognitive load on students' brains by increasing the speed and efficiency of writing. When writing more quickly and with fewer pauses, children’s brains are able to dedicate more resources to organizing, structuring, and generating ideas for sentences. Additionally, the study showed that cursive writing could help students with spelling. Without having to pause between letters, children subconsciously begin to better understand common letter patterns and develop greater muscle memory, with their brain growing in its ability to remember spellings not just by appearance but by how it feels to write them [7]. This quality of cursive is also known to help students with dyslexia, making it easier for them to recognize and retain letter shapes and improving both their literacy and writing ability [8]. This research demonstrates that cursive supports language development, enhances writing fluency, and strengthens foundational literacy skills in ways that typing and print writing do not. 

Despite these benefits, some academics argue that we should allow cursive to fade from memory completely. While there is broad support for emphasizing handwriting skills in elementary education, some educators argue that cursive writing does not offer unique benefits beyond those of print writing. In response to scientific research on cursive’s positive impact on young children’s brains, opponents simply posit that this research is inconclusive and often misquoted [9]. They highlight the common misconception that legal signatures must be in cursive, when in fact signatures in print are equally valid, removing the need for adults to use cursive in daily life [10]. In fact, despite schools teaching cursive to every student before 2010, only a small proportion of adults report using it regularly. The most influential opponents of cursive argue that including it in the public school curriculum alongside print writing and typing would simply result in a crowded curriculum with less time to focus on reading and math standards [11]. 

While several of these critiques may be factually correct, they fail to recognize the value of education beyond its “usefulness”. If we only focused on useful skills in the classroom, we’d have to cut out all forms of art, music, creative writing, and outdoor play. These do not have immediate practical applications but are essential for developing well-rounded, innovative, and empathetic minds. Cursive shaped the culture of our nation, and critics of cursive instruction underestimate the potential societal impact of its decline. Without exposure to cursive, future generations could face greater difficulty engaging with historical documents, handwritten letters from older relatives, or artistic forms of written expression like calligraphy. This cuts the next generation off from centuries of cultural and intellectual heritage. Before the digital age, beautiful penmanship was something to take pride in, a flourish that added a level of passion to the words one shared with family or friends. There is an inherent beauty in cursive as an art form connecting every literate person using the Latin alphabet through modern history—from the poems of Shakespeare to the Diary of Anne Frank to the Constitution of the United States. In preserving cursive, we are not just teaching a skill. We are passing down a shared human tradition that connects generations, enriches expression, and reminds us that we cannot measure everything of value by utility alone.