20 Pros and Cons of Teaching Cursive in Schools

Cursive handwriting was a standard part of American elementary school curriculum for most of the 20th century. The adoption of Common Core standards in 2010 dropped the cursive requirement, and most states followed suit — shifting instructional time toward keyboarding and other digital skills. Since then, a pushback has developed: more than 20 states have passed laws requiring cursive instruction to be restored. The debate is real, the research on both sides is worth knowing, and the answer depends on how you weigh cognitive development, cultural preservation, and instructional time. Here are 10 arguments for and 10 against.

The Case for Teaching Cursive

1. It supports brain development in ways print does not. Research from cognitive neuroscientist Virginia Berninger at the University of Washington found that cursive writing activates different neural pathways than print or typing — specifically areas involved in reading, writing, and memory storage. The fluid, connected movement of cursive appears to stimulate learning in ways that are not replicated by print or keyboard input.

2. Students who write in cursive often remember content better. Studies suggest that the motor engagement required by cursive — the connected, flowing strokes — produces better memory encoding than keyboarding. The tactile-motor act of writing by hand in any form has memory benefits over typing, and cursive may have advantages over print due to the continuous motor engagement.

3. Cursive is faster than print once mastered. Proficient cursive writers write faster than print writers because the pen does not lift between letters. For note-taking in lectures or standardized test essays, speed matters — and cursive allows faster, more fluent output.

4. It improves fine motor skills. Cursive writing requires precise fine motor control that contributes to broader hand and finger dexterity. For students with developing motor skills, the practice of forming connected letters contributes to the motor development that underlies many practical skills.

5. It makes historical documents accessible. Letters, diaries, legal records, and documents from before the mid-20th century are written in cursive. A student who cannot read cursive cannot read an original letter from a great-grandparent, a historical manuscript, or a primary source document — a genuine cultural and historical literacy gap.

6. Cursive supports students with dyslexia. Some research and practitioner reports suggest that cursive’s connected letter forms reduce the reversal errors (confusing b/d, p/q) that are particularly challenging for students with dyslexia. The continuous stroke of a word reinforces its form as a unit rather than a collection of separate letters.

7. It is a required accommodation for some students with motor difficulties. Occupational therapists frequently use cursive as an intervention for students who have difficulty forming print letters, because the continuous movement can be easier to learn than the discrete strokes of manuscript printing.

8. It preserves a cultural and artistic tradition. Cursive is a 500-year-old writing tradition with roots in functional necessity and artistic development. Calligraphy, personal signature, and hand-lettered correspondence are all connected to this tradition. Eliminating cursive instruction eliminates access to a significant cultural inheritance.

9. It provides a cognitive workout that complements digital skills. Physical handwriting exercises attention, sequential motor planning, and focused manual skill in ways that screen-based tasks do not. In an increasingly digital environment, the physical engagement of handwriting may provide a valuable cognitive counterbalance.

10. Many states are requiring it again — and students who missed it are at a disadvantage. With more than 20 states restoring cursive requirements, students who did not receive cursive instruction face a growing gap relative to peers who did — particularly in states where standardized tests allow or require cursive.

The Case Against Teaching Cursive

1. Instructional time is finite and genuinely scarce. Every hour spent teaching cursive is an hour not spent on reading fluency, math, science, or keyboarding. Curriculum time is a limited resource, and the opportunity cost of cursive instruction is real. If the research benefit does not clearly outweigh the cost, other uses of instructional time may be more valuable.

2. Most adults rarely use cursive after school. The practical reality is that most professional and personal writing in the modern world happens on keyboards. The time investment in mastering a skill rarely used after elementary school is difficult to justify relative to digital skills that are used daily.

3. Typing is more important for modern academic and career success. Proficient keyboarding is directly relevant to virtually every professional context, academic requirement, and personal communication need in contemporary life. Cursive is not. From a practical skills-based curricular perspective, keyboard proficiency deserves more instructional time than cursive.

4. The cognitive benefit research is contested. While some studies show benefits from cursive writing specifically, others show that any handwriting — print or cursive — provides similar cognitive benefits relative to typing. The case for cursive over print specifically is less established than it is sometimes represented.

5. Digital accessibility tools have reduced cursive’s functional role. Students who have difficulty with any handwriting — due to motor, visual, or developmental differences — have increasingly good access to dictation software, assistive typing tools, and adaptive technology. The argument that all students need handwriting fluency has weakened with the expansion of these tools.

6. Most children find it genuinely difficult to learn. The learning curve for cursive is steep and requires significant instructional time before students reach fluency. During that period, many students experience frustration, reduced writing output, and discouragement — costs that fall most heavily on students who already struggle with writing.

7. The historical document argument is addressed by other means. Transcribed, digitized, and printed versions of virtually all historically significant documents are readily available. The argument that students must read cursive to access historical documents applies more narrowly than it appears.

8. Curriculum time is better invested in reading comprehension and math. Given persistent achievement gaps in literacy and numeracy, the decision to spend significant instructional hours on cursive — when those hours could go to high-leverage literacy and math instruction — requires strong evidence of benefit that is not yet clearly established.

9. Many students never achieve functional cursive fluency. The instructional time invested in cursive produces inconsistent outcomes — some students master it, many achieve only marginally readable cursive that they then abandon, and the investment produces little lasting return for a substantial portion of students.

10. The signature argument is weaker than it appears.

A common argument for cursive is that students need it to produce a signature. But signatures can be any distinctive mark — print, stylized initials, or any personal mark — and the legal requirement of a signature does not require traditional cursive. This is one of the weakest arguments for formal cursive instruction, and illustrating how thin some of the practical arguments have become suggests that the real case for cursive rests on its cognitive and cultural merits — which are real but contested — rather than practical necessity.