A fading art finds new life
When a teenager recently opened a birthday card from his grandparents, he took one look at the handwriting inside, tossed it across the room, and muttered, "Cursed cursive." The moment, recounted in the Deseret News, captures a generational divide over a skill that many adults grew up mastering but many young people see as obsolete.
The article's author remembers a time when penmanship was prized. His wife, Stephanie, had handwriting "almost like calligraphy" and often earned the highest marks in penmanship on her report card. Their grandchildren, by contrast, were "practically aghast" at the idea of practicing penmanship, with one joking about having to start fires in fireplaces, a reference to an era they view as primitive.
For hundreds of years, penmanship was a prominent part of primary education, conveying style and status through scripts and signatures. But in 2010, cursive was largely phased out of many U.S. school programs when the newly introduced Common Core State Standards dropped handwriting from the required K-12 curriculum, according to the Deseret News. Most states and many districts dropped handwriting entirely to free up classroom time for typing and keyboard skills.
Fortune's coverage echoes that timeline, noting that the decline began earlier. By the 1980s, instructional time for cursive in some schools had been reduced from 45 minutes a day to 30-60 minutes per week. The 1990s standards-based movement created overcrowded curricula, with new math standards and social studies standards that broadened the historical scope. Meanwhile, computers became more widely available in schools and homes, making typing seem like a necessary skill.
The Common Core State Standards, adopted by 45 states between 2009 and 2014, explicitly called for keyboarding skills, cementing the shift away from handwriting.
A legislative pendulum swings back
The return of cursive began in the early 2010s, framed as a back-to-basics issue. North Carolina passed the first cursive law in 2013, requiring students to read and write in cursive by the end of fifth grade—and also requiring memorization of multiplication tables, as reported by Fortune. By 2015, 14 other states had some kind of cursive instruction requirement on the books.
As of 2026, more than 25 states, including Pennsylvania, Florida, California, and Michigan, require cursive instruction, according to Fortune. The Deseret News similarly reports that over the past decade, more than half of U.S. states have passed laws requiring penmanship instruction in cursive.
Lawmakers cite several reasons. Pennsylvania and Florida legislators argue that an informed citizenry needs to be able to read historical documents, which are often written in cursive. In 2025, a Michigan representative recounted that her granddaughter could read a letter from her deceased father—the lawmaker's son—because her school had taught cursive. A California assembly member suggested that cursive could prevent AI use in schoolwork, as typing allows students to easily copy generated text.
What the research says
The scientific case for cursive is real but more nuanced than advocates often suggest. Research shows that writing by hand engages neural networks across motor, visual, and sensory regions, according to the Deseret News. Handwriting is slower than typing, requiring synthesis and digestion of material, and studies show that forming letters by hand anchors memories more deeply than typing keystrokes. Students taking longhand notes perform better on conceptual, application-based exam questions, because typing often leads to verbatim transcription.
Fortune points to a 2020 Norwegian study of 12 adults and 12 preteens that found cursive activates brain waves and neural pathways for learning and memory. Cursive has also been associated with better outcomes for dyslexia and dysgraphia, though the evidence is mixed. Some studies show cursive helps people write faster; others show no speed advantage. First graders in Portugal taught cursive wrote in longer "bursts," attributed to the unbroken flow of the script. A 2019 study of 141 first graders found that children taught cursive read better by the end of the school year.
Yet experts note that the science is shakier than champions let on, as Fortune reports. There is solid evidence that handwriting beats typing, but it is less clear whether cursive beats print. One theory holds that cursive trains the brain to process letters more effectively, but this remains unproven.
A generational divide
Despite the legislative momentum, many young people remain unconvinced. The Deseret News article describes how the author's grandson Everett, who wants to be a doctor, noted that prescriptions are no longer written by hand, so he doesn't see the need for handwriting.
The author counters that handwriting offers breaks without notifications, reduces stress, and can be a "power move" that shows seriousness to teachers. He also suggests that developing a stylish signature is a form of self-expression that differentiates people from ChatGPT users.
In the end, the author reports that both grandsons now occasionally take handwritten notes and send handwritten birthday cards—a small victory for the fading art. He has also started taking handwritten notes himself, citing cognitive benefits and a sense of personal intimacy. "It feels more personal, more intimate, more natural," he writes.
Practical challenges
The comeback faces practical hurdles. Many of today's teachers never learned cursive themselves, and teaching it can take roughly 70 minutes a week, according to Fortune. That is a significant allocation of time in already crowded school days.
Still, the trend is clear: cursive is no longer just a nostalgic memory. It is being legislated back into classrooms, driven by concerns about historical literacy, cognitive development, and even the rise of AI. Whether the next generation will fully embrace it remains an open question, but the debate is far from over.