By Janet Pinto, Chief Academic Officer, Curriki
Sure to spark debate, today’s article in Mashable asks the question: Has technology killed cursive writing? Is penmanship still important in an age where we can efficeintly tap everything out on a keyboard?
According to the article, the nation’s Common Core State Standards took out the requirement for cursive instruction in K through 12 schools. However, it’s up to each individual state to decide whether cursive is important enough to teach its own students. Recently, North Carolina legislators approved a bill to require its students to learn cursive in elementary school, the Winston-Salem Journal reported. North Carolina joins states like California, Massachusetts and Georgia, which have already added a cursive writing requirement.
Some argue that the benefits of cursive handwriting extend beyond faster printing and actually help brain development. Suzanne Asherson, an occupational therapist with the Beverly Hills Unified School District in California, says:
Putting pen to paper stimulates the brain like nothing else, even in this age of e-mails, texts and tweets. In fact, learning to write in cursive is shown to improve brain development in the areas of thinking, language and working memory. Cursive handwriting stimulates brain synapses and synchronicity between the left and right hemispheres, something absent from printing and typing.
What do you think? Are we holding on to an outdated practice for nostalgic purposes or is it a valuable skill that should not be eliminated in schools?
