Twelve-year-old Sandi Chandee wants to be a doctor. In her teacher Sherisse Kenerson’s after-school class at Holmes Middle School in Alexandria, Va., she practiced the famously long word pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis mainly to perfect cursive — a new favorite. Sandi and her friend Halle O’Brien sign their names in looping script and take pride in having a distinct, practiced signature.
Kenerson, a multilingual teacher, started a cursive club after realizing many students couldn’t read the handwriting she used on the classroom board. Her monthly tradition of writing a quote in cursive grew into a club that drew local attention, fan mail from retirees, and outreach from educators in other states. The club’s sudden popularity mirrors a broader revival: since the 2010 Common Core standards dropped explicit cursive requirements, more than two dozen states have reinstated cursive instruction.
Arguments for bringing cursive back blend nostalgia with claims about learning benefits. Supporters say cursive can improve handwriting fluency, help with signature development, and even support some students with dyslexia or those who find the rhythm of cursive calming. California lawmakers, for example, passed a 2023 law requiring cursive in elementary schools and report positive public response.
Skeptics question whether teaching cursive is the best use of classroom time in an era of keyboards, tablets, and voice-to-text tools. Mark Warschauer, a UC Irvine education professor, has argued there’s no clear evidence that cursive offers cognitive or learning benefits beyond those gained from handwriting in print. He suggests that, because handwriting itself has documented benefits, singling out cursive may be unnecessary when other input methods are widely available.
Other researchers see a middle path. Shawn Datchuk, a special education professor at the University of Iowa, says schools should aim to make students multimodal: able to print, write in cursive, type, and use digital tools. After reviewing contemporary studies — excluding older work with outdated methods — his team found preliminary signs that cursive instruction might help spelling, possibly because the flow of connected letters makes students more aware of letter patterns.
Teachers report anecdotal gains as well: Kenerson has noticed improvements among students with reading challenges and describes cursive practice as therapeutic for some. Students in her class say cursive makes reading certain historical documents easier and gives them quiet satisfaction as they improve their penmanship. Eleven-year-old Antonio Benavides, who initially doubted the club, now enjoys the feel of pencil on paper and the small pleasure of neat loops.
Experts caution not to overstate the debate. Steve Graham, a writing researcher at Arizona State University, notes that worries about handwriting’s demise are not new and contends that cursive never fully disappeared. He is ambivalent about whether cursive beats print; the larger point, he says, is ensuring children spend time learning to write in whatever forms they will use.
The question for schools, then, is not simply whether cursive should return, but how it fits into a broader literacy strategy that includes handwriting, typing, and digital literacy. For students like Sandi and Halle, cursive club is a low-tech, hands-on way to practice a skill their grandparents used — and to leave their mark, in loops and hearts over i’s, on a signature that feels uniquely theirs. Meanwhile, the debate continues, and more classrooms and state policies are nudging cursive back into the curriculum for those who want it.