The Right to Write: Doing Away With Cursive in Schools

If you’ve been trying to teach your child how to write his or her name, you may be wasting your time. There is a movement to do away with teaching cursive writing in schools—and that movement has already swept across Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania, like many other states, does not require cursive writing instruction in schools. The decision of whether or not to teach this traditional skill lies with each individual school district.

For years, an increasingly large number of teachers and school administrators have argued that handwriting is an unnecessary skill that is becoming more and more obsolete. The argument follows that, since we live in a technological era where we use keyboards more often than pens, there is no demand for the handwritten word.

Because cursive is seen as obsolete by many, its classroom instruction is considered a waste of valuable time and resources. Removing cursive from the curriculum leaves room for what many educators consider more useful skills and subjects.

Now that we’ve listed reasons to do away with teaching cursive, let’s look at some reasons to keep it in our schools.

The most popular rebuttal to the movement is that kids need to learn how to sign their names in order to sign contracts and other legally-binding documents. In my opinion, this argument doesn’t hold a lot of water since verbal agreements, or oral contracts, are largely enforceable in most states, and electronic signatures and check-boxes are commonplace these days.

When it comes to signing something, what bothers me more is the fact that my daughter wouldn’t be able to sign a birthday card.

If that type of sappy spat doesn’t affect you, here are some more practical concerns.

In the extreme, imagine a virtual Armageddon where some catastrophic event, or some computer glitch or burp, takes us temporarily offline. In that event, our children would be limited in how they could communicate, express themselves and share their work and ideas.

Even if technology never fails, our children will still be limited if they don’t learn cursive. When we teach a child to write cursive, we are also teaching her to read it. So, if she doesn’t learn to write cursive, she will not be able to read reproductions of the original Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States.

She also won’t be able to read that heirloom copy of your calligraphed wedding invitation that is framed and sitting on the mantle.

But, most importantly, she will lose one of the things that makes her a truly unique and special person. One’s writing is like her fingerprints or DNA. It is something that is entirely her own. Though it’s made out of common building blocks, it comes together in a way that is specific to her and cannot be accurately duplicated by any other person. Consult forgers and writing analysts if you don’t believe me.

Getting rid of one of “three r’s” may free up classroom time, but it takes away far more than it gives.