Twelve-year-old Sandi Chandee wants to be a doctor when she grows up. But that’s not why she memorized one of the longest medical terms in the English language: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. In Sherisse Kenerson’s after-school classroom, Sandi fills a whole line in cursive to spell the word that describes a type of lung disease. The word lets her practice cursive — her new favorite method of writing. When she becomes a doctor, Sandi, who signs her cursive autograph with a heart above the i, is determined to have a perfect signature.
Twelve-year-old Halle O’Brien, Sandi’s cursive partner-in-crime, agrees. “I prefer writing in cursive,” Halle said.
The pair are proud members of the Holmes Middle School cursive club in Virginia. Cursive has been on the upswing for years now. More than two dozen states now require cursive instruction in schools after the 2010 Common Core standards omitted the skill.
Kenerson, a multilingual teacher at Holmes, started the middle school club when students couldn’t read her writing on the board. They just stared at her blankly, she said. For an educator who believes quotes deserve to be written in cursive and who posts a new one on the board each month, Kenerson wanted to give students a chance to understand the magic of the loopy writing.
The club exploded in popularity this past winter, with local news and national coverage crediting it for “keeping cursive alive.” Since then, Kenerson has been puzzled by the attention. She has received fan mail from retirees and teachers (written in cursive, of course), heard from people across the country, and even done Zoom calls with educators to explain how she runs the club. “I’m flabbergasted,” Kenerson said. “I’m just going along with the ride.” She decided that cursive is a way to hold on to the past, and many people are not ready to let it go.
Kenerson’s club is a local example of a nationwide trend — cursive handwriting is back in many classrooms. Teachers and legislators credit the resurgence to nostalgia and some evidence of educational benefits. But the curves and swoops are contentious among experts. Some argue that cursive does not add real value for students, especially in the age of artificial intelligence.
“I have seen no evidence that cursive brings any particular cognitive or learning benefit beyond that brought by hand printing,” wrote Mark Warschauer, a professor of education at the University of California, Irvine. He noted that the cognitive benefits of young students writing by hand in general are already well established. Warschauer, who founded the UC Irvine Digital Learning Lab, opposes teaching cursive in schools because of the “waste of time and effort” when print handwriting, voice-to-text applications, and keyboards are easily accessible.
Much of the debate centers around classroom time. Should educators spend minutes teaching another way to write on paper when technology is prevalent? Shawn Datchuk, a professor of special education at the University of Iowa, said the answer does not have to be one or the other. In his college classroom, he sees students increasingly using tablets and a stylus to take notes. “What that means is that as a country, we likely need to help our students become multi-modal,” Datchuk said. Students need to be able to handwrite using print, use cursive, type, and interact with technology.
Technology is not a fix-all, Datchuk added. “One of the dirty secrets behind spell checker and artificial intelligence is that you still need to be able to spell in order to use those well.” He and a team of researchers reviewed known studies on cursive instruction. Some older studies used antiquated tools and were excluded; others lacked implementation details. With caveats, Datchuk said preliminary evidence shows cursive writing could improve spelling. He said the “special sauce” for cursive is that students must pay closer attention to how letters connect when they write.
Kenerson has seen anecdotal evidence that cursive helps students with dyslexia. Sharon Quirk-Silva, a California assemblymember who introduced a cursive bill, said she’s heard anecdotal evidence that cursive can be therapeutic for students with special needs. Since Quirk-Silva’s 2023 cursive mandate, reception has been overwhelmingly positive.
Datchuk said he began studying cursive for personal reasons — his 8-year-old son still asks his dad to read grandmother’s birthday cards because he can’t read cursive. “That brings up the larger generational divide that’s probably happened not only with my sons, but with kids and young adults across the United States who just never received instruction in cursive,” he said.
Antonio Benavides, an 11-year-old in Kenerson’s club, is an example of that divide. His dad heard about the club and immediately sent Antonio. Now he sticks his tongue out and stares intently at the loops; he enjoys practicing the curves and says his normally sprawling print penmanship has improved. “I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me, cursive club, what do I need that for?'” Benavides remembered telling his dad. But now, “Yeah, I like it,” he said. When there’s a moment of silence as students practice their i’s and t’s, Antonio whispers, “I love that sound.” “The sound of a pencil when it’s silent is just so nice,” he explained.
Steve Graham, Regents Professor at Arizona State University’s College for Teaching and Learning Innovation, argues that despite media attention, cursive never really went anywhere. Graham, who has written extensively about writing, said he has heard about the “death of handwriting or the death of cursive” for about 50 years. “I’d say, ‘Well, damn, I didn’t hear it was buried,'” Graham said. He is ambivalent about whether cursive or print is more effective and thinks the fixation on cursive is an adult phenomenon.
“I’m often amazed at how much attention it gets,” Graham said. With more studies, he expects differences in benefits between the two types of handwriting will be insignificant. What’s important, he said, is spending time to teach kids to write.
Back in Kenerson’s cursive club, 11-year-old Conrad Thompson said she’s the only student in her history class who can read her teacher’s huge Declaration of Independence printout. It makes her proud. “Hopefully, one day, me and my family will get to go see it in person,” Conrad said.
As for Sandi and Halle, the pair have no doubts about their newfound skill. “Will you be back next week?” Halle asked Sandi about the after-school club. “Of course I will,” Sandi responded.