Give me Penmanship, Please!

Cursive handwriting is a necessary attribute of a well-educated citizen not just for honoring tradition and the art of penmanship, but for fluidity of thought and speech. The LA Times wrote an article, "The Many Health Perks of Good Handwriting" chronicling the research that correlates increased brain activity with handwriting practice. The evidence is very compelling because of how the fine motor skills help develop the brain and reading readiness for early elementary students. Cursive is more efficient, professional, and generationally un-biased- there is a universality to cursive. For centuries, eloquence in writing and speech was the standard of an educated, thoughtful citizen- we must maintain this for our students because they will need to be able to express themselves in written and spoken form for college, vocational school, interviews, and even less formal venues. The need for cursive instruction is obvious and should not be considered a separate part of the curriculum, but rather infiltrated throughout the content areas. I have seen this accomplished very well at a few private schools in this area (Covenant Classical School and Naperville Classical Academy). Both schools require penmanship practice in the early grades, and after 3rd grade (I think), students are required to only use penmanship in ALL of their writing (they are also required to stand when answering every question, and to use full sentences!) The reasoning behind these seemingly formal practices has multiple purposes, but for the purposes of this response, eloquence and intentional communication are the main skills being instilled.

Students should not just be equipped to answer questions on a multiple choice test correctly, filling in the right bubble, or regurgitate information drilled into them- but be able to articulately express, debate, and defend their thoughts on and extrapolations of such information. Cursive is a piece of this "owning" and cultivating their own voice for both their public and private lives- even if for learning how "it" has been done for centuries before texting and emailing. Just because everyone is texting does not mean we need instruction on text speech; are our goals as educators to facilitate our student's flourishing and contributing to human history and society (hopefully improving conditions for the disenfranchised and future generations) or merely meet the fads and demands of our functionality obsessed culture? Eliminating cursive instruction is equitable to a "dumbing down" of our standards and submission to the trends of technology.