The Cursive of Frankenscribbler

Conservatives have launched a campaign to bring back the teaching of old-fashioned handwriting in elementary school. I'm with them all the way.

My siblings and I share joint custody of a priceless historical treasure: the letters our parents exchanged during World War II.

My father was stationed in the U.K. Every week or so he would climb into a B-17 bomber and head off to Germany – and likely death. Only about 30% of his cohorts were lucky enough to survive a regulation tour of duty

He wrote to her, and she to him, several times a week. I won’t go into detail, but their letters form a saga of wit and courage, daily life and cosmic longing. The story ended well: He came home, they built a life full of kids and laughter.

But the latest chapter of my parents’ story has me worried. Their great-grandchildren – now ranging in age from one to 18 – may never be able to savor that epistolary bounty. Like almost all personal communication back then, my parents’ letters were written in longhand, a.k.a. cursive. You know the look: words adorned with swirls and swoops, all the letters held together in a single line. Many kids don’t learn cursive anymore.

That tragedy has inspired a growing and mostly partisan response that aims to re-focus American primary education. The charge is being led by conservative Republicans. And, to my surprise – possibly yours as well, frequent readers – I’m on their side.

First, a bit of history. Cursive has been around at least since the late Roman Empire, when scholars found they could write faster if they joined the letters together. Even after the introduction of the printing press a millennium later, handwritten documents were valued for their flair and authenticity.

Fast forward to 2010, when the National Governors Association and state education officials drafted a new “Common Core” of uniform standards for U.S. schools. The aim was to prepare students for the workforce of the digital age, with more emphasis on math, science and reasoning skills. Also, because pen and pencil were being replaced by the keyboard, less focus on handwriting.

Most public schools in the U.S. don’t really teach that subject these days, at least not beyond an early grade or two. As a result, young Americans have grown up without learning to write legibly in cursive – and, in many cases, even to read it.

My grandchildren are among those victims. Nearly all their written communication is consumed on a phone or a laptop. That includes much of their schoolwork, though some reading assignments are still available in books and as paper handouts. My little guys can write passably in block capitals, but their skills with cursive are meager.

That is a tragedy. If you cannot decipher cursive, you can’t really experience literature’s great works in their original state. Same for history’s more important letters, diaries, ledgers and other records, including our country’s founding documents.

Sure, you can get the gist of things in a printed version. But scientists who study the subject say that handwriting can reflect a writer’s personality, state of mind, social status, or the tenor of the times. Marie Antoinette’s cursive was orderly and graceful, until she lost her head. Mozart’s letters were an impatient mess.

If your children can read only the printed iteration of such personal expressions, they’re missing something – especially if they plan to major in history, literature, politics, philosophy or any other subject involving old documents.

In addition, researchers believe that learning to guide the hand through those loops and ligatures is good for children. In a 2019 study of Canadian elementary schools, kids who were taught that skill performed better in other subjects than those who learned only block letters. In 2020, researchers in Norway declared that learning cursive stimulates a part of the cerebrum important for memory and, thus, “provides the brain with optimal conditions for learning.”

Such praise has inspired legislators in more than 20 U.S. states to reinstate the teaching of cursive in their public schools in recent years. Other states are considering similar measures. Florida’s House of Representatives just passed such a bill, 113 to 0. It is set to breeze through the Republican-dominated Senate and become law on July 1.

In some cases, those moves are driven by a darker agenda. It involves purging schools of such horrors as sex education, black and feminist history courses, and anything that seems too “woke.” Meanwhile, right-wing activists want more emphasis on religion, “traditional values” and other things that are, I believe, mostly out of place in the early-grades classroom.

Not so the drive to restore cursive writing. That is a tool, not a worldview, and it doesn’t lean left or right – as does my execrable handwriting, sometimes both ways in the same sentence.

I did well in all my elementary school subjects, except cursive. Yes, I was a first-grade Frankenscribbler, with no idea why. But I now see the pursuit of penmanship much as those researchers do: a means to an end, a neural exercise that somehow limbers up the brain for greater marvels.

That’s why, on this subject, I am in solidarity with all those otherwise misguided meatheads who seek to drag America back to the ideological stone age. Like them, I want to strengthen the minds and small-motor skills of our rising generation.

I also want my descendants to be able to read those letters that crossed the ocean between my mother and father as history raged around them. And, someday, to make sense of the barely legible scratchings that I’ll someday leave behind.