In Defense of Cursive Writing

It was recently announced that the state of Indiana will no longer require cursive writing to be taught in their public schools.  They reason it is more important to teach typing for computer use than to try and read "scribbling".

I'm not against teaching typing, nor am I foolish enough to think that having students master cursive writing is going to get them to abandon e-mails or texting.  But I do have a list of arguments about the need for future generations to know how to write in cursive.

First of all, I like the terms joint writing and real writing which are commonly used for this type of penmanship in the UK (I often think the Brits have much better words for things than we do, but that's a subject for another post).  Those expressions denote exactly what the joining together of letters with a pen on a page do.

The next thought that comes to mind is: how will they sign their own names to legal papers or documents of any kind?  Oh, yes, I suppose signatures could be done with an electronic fingerprint, but isn't that sort of a dumbing down of society?  What comes to mind are those in previous generations who never learned to write and signed with an "x".  Is that what we want to progress to in our electronic rush?

It also occurred to me that our future society might not even be able to read historical documents like the Declaration of Independence, or archival letters and such in museums.  Again, I would predict that these could be replicated in bold print letters, but at what loss to their appreciation and even their self-esteem at interpreting the original script?

My curiosity about just how widespread this opinion about cursive is led me to some research and some heartening facts.  It appears that cursive is still being widely taught between grades 1-3 in U.S. public and private schools.  There are exceptions such as Tennessee which teaches practically none, and there are teachers who claim they are too busy to teach it.

The most interesting fact I learned, in support of continuing to have students learn cursive, is that it's been proven to be conducive to brain development and language fluency.  It allows a child to overcome motor challenges by causing both the left and right sides of the brain to work together as he masters the exercise, activating parts of the brain that lead to increased command of vocabulary, while stimulating intelligence and improving neural connections.

As that previous paragraph states in academic terms, there are sound reasons for the instruction of cursive far beyond the obvious ones, and the arguments against it, including the influence of the internet, the pressure of teaching standardized testing that leave no time, or the push to be technologically literate don't wash with me.  Regardless of what else our young people need to learn to survive in the twenty-first century, real writing needs to stay in their curriculum.

I'd really like to hear your thoughts on it.