Cursive Writing: Should It Still Be Taught?

I remember learning cursive writing in the third grade in the 1960s. I also remember "writing" being my worst subject in fourth grade, based on my grades. Part of the problem was that I tried to write very fast, so I could go on to something else. Also, part of the problem may have been my not adequately developing my fine motor skills.

Is cursive writing important enough to warrant being a required subject in elementary schools today? I think good arguments can be made both ways. On the plus side, children who learn cursive writing will be able to read materials from the past (as well as the present and the future) that are written in cursive writing. Also, persons who are writing with a pencil or pen can typically write faster using cursive rather than printing, making cursive more efficient for many things, such as taking notes when a computer isn't available.

However, printed letters are much easier to read. Books, magazines, newspapers, e-mails, etc., are all printed with individual letters, rather than the flowing cursive writing. If books and other materials were written in cursive writing, it would likely take us much longer to read them.

When I write fast, my personal cursive handwriting is so poor that even I have trouble deciphering it. I can write neater, but I find that writing cursive neatly takes me as long as printing.

Since a primary purpose of writing (the primary purpose!) is for the writing to be read, why not make it easier on readers by printing instead of using cursive? That's my view.

When I took labs in college in the 1970s and 1980s, we were required to print our notes for experiments rather than do them in cursive. If I remember correctly, the primary reason is that printed materials are easier to read than cursive writing, and if our experiments were real world scientific experiments, records needed to be legible and accessible so the experiments could be read about, studied, and replicated to confirm the results.

Even printing is done far less often now. As computers and word processing become more and more readily available, there is less and less need to print or write things out using pen and paper. I still love printing out hard copies of things, including owners' manuals. But I am thankful that these are not in cursive or hand printed.

Personally, I agree with those who feel that cursive writing ought not be mandatory for elementary school students now. Some persons who have tried deciphering some quickly written things I've done in cursive are probably very happy that most of my writing is now done on a computer. I can write faster and more legibly with the keyboard. You probably can, too. And printing by hand suffices nicely for most things that can't be done with a computer, as I see it anyway. I am one person who is grateful that I seldom need to read or write cursive writing now.