Cursive writing is taught in elementary, and not reviewed past that. As a whole, cursive is losing the prominence it once had, but the question of whether or not it is still needed remains to be fully answered.
“It’s a skill that I don’t believe is outdated,” social studies teacher Brad Raine said.
As a tool, cursive still provides use to students in certain circumstances. In classes such as world history there is lots of information for students to learn.
“If a student chooses to write in cursive, maybe it allows them to write more or retain more information,” Raine said.
Sometimes cursive is needed as a tool in the classroom. Second-hand documents and digitized transcriptions are making cursive less required.
“People need to learn how to read cursive to read historical documents,” English teacher Hannah Haines said.
Historical documents can be very important especially for students who require them as sources in classwork.
“We’re not reading the actual Constitution, we’re reading a digitized version of the Constitution,” Haines said.
Cursive writing impacts students, whether intentionally or not. Those who choose to use cursive can find value in the writing style depending on how they decide to use it. Current high school students have improved their handwriting through cursive.
“I have a couple of students that write in cursive, and their writing is very nice,” Haines said.
Contrarily, students who don’t commit to cursive can be negatively affected.
“It makes it worse, people just try to blend letters together,” sophomore Mycaela Highbarger said.
This opinion about cursive writing is not alone.
“Cursive writing could lead to more scribbles than actual writing,” Raine said.
