Is cursive coming back in Connecticut schools? Research suggests a host of benefits

When Celia Batan sat down to write her graduate thesis, she started with one question: “What do we lose if we do not teach children how to connect letters instead of printing or typing?”

On the surface the answer looked like this: the teen manning the bakery counter handed back a cake decorated in print handwriting instead of the requested cursive message; the college freshman stared quizzically, asking “sign how?” when he filed paperwork for his new bank account; the class of out-of-school youth asked, “Excuse me, professor, what is that?” when Batan began to write in script on the board.

“It was like Greek to them,” she said.

Years of research and one book later, Batan has found that students don’t just lose the ability to read and write cursive when they don’t learn the skill — they miss out on a deeper level of cognition that regular print lettering simply cannot emulate.

Cursive is having a moment in Connecticut with a new law that adds cursive writing to the state’s model kindergarten through eighth-grade curriculum. While the legislation does not mandate cursive’s adoption into Connecticut classrooms, it nonetheless signals a new emphasis on reviving the fading tradition.

Batan argues that cursive creates better readers, writers and thinkers.

Evidence suggests a wide range of benefits from cursive instruction. One study found that students who wrote their essay in cursive scored higher on that section of the SAT.

“Those that were written in longhand had a deeper consideration of the thesis. … They were written more profoundly than those that were printed,” Batan said. “There was no difference between comprehension scores of writing in print and typing.”

Batan said other studies have found evidence that note taking in cursive improves memory recall. Additionally, its been found to activate different parts of the brain than regular writing, including those used for drawing and creativity. Learning cursive helped young students score higher in spelling and reading by signaling which letters go together and when through repetition. Cursive has also been shown to benefit students with dyslexia.

The deeper idea is that when your letters connect, your thoughts connect.

“The haptic input, the touch, the stimulation that you get from scratching paper is not the same as writing on the screen,” Batan said. “(Cursive) gives you the stimulation in the brain … when the synapsis fire, the memory is cemented.”

“It doesn’t matter what the style is,” Batan said, “As long as it is connected.”

Rep. Matt Blumenthal, who worked with Batan on the cursive measure, said that this was the first time he was able to help pass a piece of legislation that came entirely from a constituent.

For Blumenthal, he said that when kids fail to learn cursive, they miss out on the cognitive benefits, but also the essential skill of reading cursive.

“You can’t read the Constitution in its original text, you can’t read the Declaration of Independence and its original text, if you can’t read cursive,” Blumenthal said.

These historical implications weighed similarly on Rep. Frances Cooley, who, like Blumenthal, introduced a bill to mandate cursive writing instruction in elementary schools.

Cooley said he became concerned as school systems dropped the “bedrock, fundamental skill” of cursive writing in favor of computer typing.

For Cooley, the value of cursive boils down to developing dexterity, muscle memory and fine motor skills, which he said is crucial for all students, but particularly those heading into vocational tracks.

“Cursive is when students are introduced to their first precision instrument tool,” Cooley said.

Working as a chef to pay for college, Cooley said the knife skills he learned to prepare meals harkened back “to when they first stuck pencils in my hands and taught me how to write cursive.”

The same applies to other professions.

“If you’ve ever worked on a car, in my grandfather’s generation, you could get your hand in. Now, you’re using tools where you really can’t get your hands into the position you used to 40, 50 years ago,” Cooley said. “You really have to have the manual dexterity and fine motor skills to work your instruments to tune and change and fix. … As we’ve been going forward, the tools become smaller and smaller, the space has become smaller and smaller.”

Joslyn DeLancey, vice president of the Connecticut Education Association, said that in many ways, evolving 21st century skills pushed cursive onto the back burner for some educators.

“I think that this is a skill that might be aging itself out with time and technology,” DeLancey said. “Kids aren’t writing physically as much as they used to. Kids definitely do more typing, they do more talk to text.

“I think it stopped being a priority because there were other skills that students had to learn that might have made them more relevant in terms of technology usage and literacy.”

In the classroom, DeLancey said she “really loved” teaching cursive. For her, it was “low-stakes learning time,” but as some students found catharsis in practice, others grew frustrated as they struggled with the skill.

DeLancey said she understands the relevance of learning cursive for the purpose of signatures and recognizing different font faces, but she said she’s unsure if “it’s the most important skill that students have to learn in elementary school.”

If cursive writing became a mandate, DeLancey said it would come at a cost to districts. She suggested that resources would be better spent on other needs than cursive programs and workbooks.

She added that cursive instruction has not “disappeared” from Connecticut classrooms as some project.

“I don’t know if, before they made this legislation, if they audited districts to see how many actually maintained a cursive curriculum, but I think it would probably be more than people think,” DeLancey said. “I think there are a lot of people who wouldn’t want to let go of cursive.”

Connecticut State Department of Education Chief Academic Officer Irene Parisi agreed.

“When we go on instructional walkthroughs with various districts, we can see evidence of it in the classroom,” Parisi said. “There are specific programs that are geared towards that because it all fits into posture and body movement and crossing your midline and activating the brain. … There’s more that we know now about the research of handwriting, manuscript and cursive. So I would say it’s probably fair to say that there are more districts using different programs or providing for instruction.”

This month, Connecticut school districts answered a CSDE-issued request for information regarding current manuscript and cursive writing curricula.

Parisi said the goal is not to determine where cursive is and is not being taught, but to identify through vendors and interested parties which manuscript and cursive writing curriculums, materials, accommodations, and instructional sequences are most effective.

“It’s about our teacher colleagues and ensuring we can give them the best guidance on what they could use,” Parisi said.

While Parisi said she would “love it” if all districts used the state’s model K-8 curriculum and the free, open education resources it provides, she said districts ultimately have the choice of whether or not to integrate all or parts of the model, including cursive.

While cursive is not mandatory across the board, it becomes a requirement if the district decides to adopt it.

As news of cursive’s addition to the K-8 model spread, one teacher on Twitter questioned when she would find the time to teach a new alphabet when most students “will only ever use it to sign their name.”

“More and more is being added to the plates of teachers and students these days,” Leslie Blatteau, the vice president of PreK-12 for the Connecticut chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement to the Courant. “This current trend of increased mandates fails to consider what our students need most right now — the opportunity to build relationships with educators and peers in safe, welcoming, and well-maintained schools.”

Blatteau encouraged leaders to focus on reducing class sizes, boosting mental health support and growing the educator pipeline in our state.

“We will be much better able to ensure students develop a wide range of skills when we take these actions first and prioritize relationships in our classrooms and schools,” Blatteau said.

While Blumenthal and Cooley’s original proposals would have made cursive writing instruction a requirement, neither representative said they were planning to reintroduce a mandate this session.

Blumenthal said that as of now, he’s “in wait and see mode.”

“Obviously, we want to be careful every time we place a mandate on educators that limits their flexibility and imposes additional demands on resources,” Blumenthal said. “I’d like to see how the situation develops and how having this in the model curriculum affects what schools do.”

Cooley said he’s hopeful that the addition to cursive to the K-8 model will help schools “see the wisdom of adopting cursive back into their curriculums.”

“I’m hopeful that the vast majority of the school districts will re-introduce cursive that have dropped it,” Cooley said. “I know there’s a lot of opposition to more and more educational mandates coming down from the state. … Hopefully they will follow the model curriculum and there won’t be a need for mandating.”

As for Batan, she hopes cursive writing will become a requirement Connecticut so that all students, and society can reap the benefits.

“While we’re waiting for more research about this, I think we should pay attention to the current research that we have now, because we’re thinking about the labor force in 2036. So the kindergartners now have 17 years to finish their schooling,” Batan said. “Tony Wagner, one of the visionaries, said the future will ask for workers to solve more difficult problems. And will we have developed the mindset for that?”