Fighting to save cursive from the Common Core

The Boston Globe:

WHEN IT comes to the classic “three Rs” of education, reading and ’rithmetic are still going strong. But ’riting — at least by hand — has fallen on hard times.

Today, the vast majority of adult composition takes place at the keyboard, not the paper tablet. Is handwriting, particularly cursive, really necessary in the digital age? Increasingly, the answer is not really. Common Core standards issued in 2010 do not include any requirements for handwriting instruction. Even education experts who would like to see more classroom time devoted to writing question whether every student still needs to be taught two entirely different styles of handwriting.

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Even at later ages, there’s research that suggests pen and paper still have their place. A paper published last year in the journal Psychological Science, for example, found that college students who took longhand notes during lectures retained more information than their peers who typed their notes on Internet-disabled laptops.

Read the whole story: The Boston Globe