There's something indispensable about the romance of a handwritten cursive letter. Experts have made careers out of pouring over the significance of these curves and lines trying to quantify and qualify the arcs into a science. Given the sustained scientific and cultural significance of penmanship, we must still try to preserve the dying art of cursive handwriting.

In third grade, I missed the unit on cursive because I had strep throat. I never formally learned how to transition into an "r" or accurately create the loop-the-loop on the "o." Instead, I adopted my own synthesized version of print and cursive letters when I learned that I could write faster than any of my classmates. And, while my handwriting has changed and been refined over time, the cursive style remained the same.

But that was 12 years ago. Now, I'm hard-pressed to find anyone other than my parents, professors and ophthalmologist that still write in cursive. Since then, many New Jersey schools from where I grew up are slowly writing out the handwriting exercise from their curriculums, according to the national Common Core State Standards adopted by New Jersey. These academic standards, followed by 44 states, intend to structure the educational trajectory for students through high school, college and into the work life. In 2004, the CCSS in New Jersey expected students "to write legibly in manuscript or cursive." However, eight years later, the standards no longer specifically reference cursive as a learning priority for elementary school children. Students are now required to become proficient in keyboarding and "develop skills related to media use." This trend doesn't just start and end in the Garden State.

According to Steve Graham, a professor of education at Vanderbilt University, school districts across the country are spending less and less time teaching students the handwriting style. While schools in the past would start the lessons in third grade and continue throughout elementary school, many school districts have stopped the lessons beyond third grade, and it's not surprising. The dying art can't stack up to the convenience and demand of technological skills.

Consider the similar demise of Newsweek. The magazine announced only a week ago that it will stop circulating print copies of the publication and, instead, will only function as a digital media starting next year. Likewise, newspapers are struggling to remain relevant in a world where most people will receive their news first from either a CNN update on their phone or a trending Twitter hashtag. Although many will still fight for the need of a physical newspaper and the concept of turning the page of a physical book, the encroaching technological world is prevailing over these novelties.
And what is the significance of cursive to our technological society where we've reduced our feelings down to emoticons? But beyond that, what is the significance of having students learn an outdated, unreadable style when they could be spending that time learning how to type without looking at their keyboards?

Learning how to physically write helps students train different parts of their brain. According to Virginia Berninger, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington, while typing, students need only to push a button to formulate an entire letter at once, but handwriting requires the execution of a number of strokes to create one letter. Learning how to use sequential finger movements to generate each segment of a letter activates and engages the storage and management of information sections of the brain. You can only imagine the exercise your brain was getting as you were trying to figure out how in the world you were going to write a "z" in cursive as a child. This cognitive interaction keeps the brain sharp, because with every curvy letter you write, you're exercising your muscle memory. While print writing is going to be the same every time, cursive inherently requires different lines and transitions depending on the letters and the word. It seems when we exchange the writing utensil for an iPhone, our brains would have to reconsider how to make these previously established connections.

Even if you can't make the perfect "z" every time the way your third grade teacher instructed you, your parents may appreciate a handwritten letter in cursive far more than a hurried text garbled by autocorrect. Penmanship is an integral part of our society's identity and the culture that has led to the less personal modes of communication like emails, Facebook posts and text messages. While the ability and capacity to communicate with one another has only grown more convenient and useful, these advances in technology can't replicate the intimate nature of cursive handwriting. The care and precision that needs to be applied to make the handwriting legible is lost when communicating is as easy as pressing send.

Although it may seem archaic, formal and unnecessary, cursive empowers young students to learn the most basic skill of writing. It hones the brain in ways technology may not yet be able to reproduce. And if you think that you can't learn cursive  in your twenties, you should consider the nine year olds who already can.


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