Twelve-year-old Sandi Chandee wants to be a doctor. But in Sherisse Kenerson’s after-school classroom at Holmes Middle School in Alexandria, Va., she memorized and wrote the long medical term pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis mainly to practice cursive — her new favorite way to write. She signs her cursive autograph with a heart above the i and is determined to have a perfect signature one day.
Her friend and classmate Halle O’Brien agrees. “I prefer writing in cursive,” Halle said. The two are proud members of Kenerson’s cursive club, which exploded in popularity this winter after local coverage and a Washington Post story. Kenerson, a multilingual teacher, started the club after realizing students couldn’t read her cursive on the board. “I realized they didn’t know how to write or read in cursive,” she said. Her monthly board quote tradition inspired her to give students a chance to learn the loopy writing, and the club drew fan mail from retirees and teachers and even school visits and Zoom calls from educators in several states.
Kenerson’s club is one example of a nationwide trend. Since the 2010 Common Core omitted cursive, more than two dozen states now require cursive instruction in schools. Supporters point to nostalgia and some evidence of educational benefits; critics say it’s an unnecessary use of classroom time in an era of keyboards, tablets and voice-to-text tools.
Mark Warschauer, a professor of education at UC Irvine, wrote that he has “seen no evidence that cursive brings any particular cognitive or learning benefit beyond that brought by hand printing.” He argued that because the benefits of handwriting in general are well established, teaching cursive specifically can be a “waste of time and effort” when other input methods are available.
But Shawn Datchuk, a professor of special education at the University of Iowa, said the answer doesn’t have to be binary. He sees students increasingly using tablets and styluses, and said schools should help students become multi-modal: able to handwrite in print, use cursive, type, and interact with technology. Datchuk and colleagues reviewed existing studies on cursive instruction, discarding older research using antiquated tools or studies missing implementation details. With those caveats, he said preliminary evidence suggests cursive instruction could improve spelling because students pay closer attention to how letters connect when they write.
Teachers and some advocates also point to anecdotal benefits. Kenerson has observed improvements in students with dyslexia and says cursive can feel therapeutic. California Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva, who introduced a 2023 law mandating cursive instruction in elementary schools, said constituent response has been overwhelmingly positive.
The generational divide is evident in households. Datchuk recounted his 8-year-old son, who reads Harry Potter, passing handwritten birthday cards to his dad because he can’t read them, highlighting that many young people never received cursive instruction. For some students, like 11-year-old Antonio Benavides in Kenerson’s club, cursive has improved his penmanship and given him pleasure in the quiet sound of pencil on paper. “I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me, cursive club, what do I need that for?'” he remembered telling his dad. Now, “Yeah, I like it,” he said.
Steve Graham, a Regents Professor at Arizona State University who has written extensively about writing, said the media fixation on cursive is largely an adult phenomenon. He noted that fears about the “death” of handwriting have circulated for decades and asserted that cursive never really disappeared. Graham is ambivalent about whether cursive or print is superior and thinks differences in benefits will be small once more research is done. What’s important, he said, is spending time teaching kids to write.
Back at the cursive club, students practice loops and connections on worksheets and whiteboards. Conrad Thompson, 11, said she’s the only student in her history class who can read her teacher’s large Declaration of Independence printout, which makes her proud. Kenerson said she’s “flabbergasted” by the attention her club has received but happy to be “along with the ride.” For Sandi and Halle, the club is simple and satisfying — a place to write, improve, and be excited about a skill their grandparents learned in school.
The debate over whether schools should require cursive continues: some experts see little unique benefit beyond other handwriting, while others argue cursive complements spelling, supports some learners, and helps students become versatile writers. For now, growing pockets of demand, teacher-led clubs and statewide mandates are bringing cursive back into classrooms — at least for students who, like Sandi and Halle, enjoy the curves and the chance to sign their names in a way that feels distinctly their own.