Breaking news from the Garden State. New Jersey is bringing cursive handwriting back to elementary schools. Third through fifth graders will once again loop, swirl, and dramatically cross their t’s like it’s 1897 and the fountain pen lobby finally got its way.
On one hand Gen Z famously cannot sign a check. Or read one. Or locate one. (Checks are basically museum artifacts now, kept next to fax machines and Blockbuster membership cards.) So yes, there is something charming even romantic about a generation learning to sign their name in something other than a fingerprint or a DocuSign box.
On the other hand that ship?
The cursive ship? It has sailed.
It has sunk. It is currently being studied by marine biologists alongside Atlantis.
Still, here we are. Cursive revival. Cue the violins.
The argument, as always, is about the brain. Cursive, they say, activates different neural pathways. It ignites something. Fine motor skills! Memory! Cognition! Perhaps even wisdom!
And listen, writing does slow us down. It forces thought. It asks for patience. There is something almost meditative about the act of forming letters that insist on being connected, like they refuse to exist alone.
But also are we sure we want to ignite more parts of the brain right now?
These kids already:
-Navigate algorithms
-Decode emojis
-Manage group chats with 37 people
-Live under constant digital surveillance
-Exist in a world that will absolutely expect them to be emotionally fluent, technologically agile, and globally aware
And now we’re like “Quick, grab a pencil. Let’s activate the hippocampus.”
Bold choice.
Are we hoping cursive will:
Make them calmer?
Make them smarter?
Make them more polite?
Make them write thank-you notes?
Because I hate to break it to us, but the most unhinged notes I’ve ever received were written in flawless cursive. Penmanship has never been a reliable predictor of emotional regulation.
Cursive didn’t save us.
Cursive didn’t stop fax machines.
Cursive didn’t prevent reply-all email disasters.
And yet, here we are, nostalgic for loops.
Let’s be honest. This isn’t really about children. This is about us. About adults standing in the rubble of modern life saying, “Surely this this elegant slant of an ‘f’ will bring order.”
Cursive feels like control. Like continuity. Like proof that not everything has changed beyond recognition.
It’s the educational equivalent of:
Vinyl records
Handwritten menus
“Back in my day…”
We are grieving something, and cursive is getting caught in the crossfire.
So, here’s the thing (and I hate myself a little for this) there is something lovely about cursive.
It’s personal.
It’s imperfect.
It reveals mood.
It carries fingerprints of emotion.
Cursive says I took my time.
It says: I was here.
It says: This wasn’t copy-pasted.
In a world of swipes and taps, maybe there is value in insisting that some things require friction.
Maybe cursive won’t save us. But maybe it doesn’t have to. Maybe it’s not about checks or signatures or brain activation. Maybe it’s just about giving kids another way to express themselves in a world that often rushes them.
Or maybe it’s just another well-intentioned policy that will confuse parents, stress teachers, and result in exactly one beautifully written grocery list before everyone goes back to typing.
Either way, sharpen your pencils, New Jersey.
The loops are coming back.
Categories: Culture, current events, Humor, identity
psychologistmimi 
I think it’s a good thing.
When I see how the current generations hold a writing implement, grasping it awkwardly and with little control, it is definitely a step back to carbon-tipped-stick-on-a-cave-wall.
The current generations also spend much time pretending to be medieval sorcerers with agency and magic – HUGE waste of time. At least it’s sort of social, with fake other people. You can’t take over the real world if your brain snaps to a fake one with a soundtrack where you aren’t even yourself.
The world NEEDS that energy, and it’s going to GAMES.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I like it. ‘Bout time these youngsters had to learn something that took me years to accomplish. Couldn’t spell, but, the cursive slant looked so good…
LikeLike
Oh Dear Lord “Cursive Writing” Somewhat
Of An Ongoing Lifelong Nightmare for
Individuals With Challenges
Associated With ‘Dysgraphia’
Hehe my Rote Memory Impeccable
In Acing Multiple Choice Tests Usually
At the Top of the Class All the Way Through
Three College Degrees Dear Miriam Perhaps
They Just Read Over my Chicken Scratch
With A Pre-Conceived Notion
i Might Be Practicing Writing
Prescriptions for A Coming
Profession of A Doctor Hehe
Even With Mail-In Voting my
Signature Has Been Challenged
As Not Possibly the First Signature
Provided Yet Key Every Signature is Different
For the Challenge of Writing Cursive in Any way
Shape
or Fashion
Yes Form
for Real Yet
With Every Functional
Disability Humans Often
Even Far Exceed Their Peers
in Play Arounds and Work Arounds
Novel
That
Allow
one to
Survive and
Even Thrive Ahead
True Not Speaking Until
Age 4 Was Not my Only
Challenge on the Autism
Spectrum on the Bi-Polar
Spectrum With ADHD too
As True Dysgraphia is Often
Associated With ADHD too
Yet Hey if
Doctor’s
Can Get
Away Now
With Their
Illegible Signatures
on Their Scripts I’ll
Just Use a Digital
Keyboard and Sing
A New Song oF mY SoUL
to my Full HeART’S Desire No
Longer Confused as a Grade
School Child Only By The Chicken
Scratch
of my
Right Hand
AND
A Best pART of
A Public Dance All
23,142 Miles Now in
149 Months Every where i go
Is it Requires No Words at All
Unlike the Work and Play Arounds
Now To Create 14.9 MiLLioN Words of
Free Verse Poetry in the Same Span of Dates
And While i Digress it’s Sort of Like Being Called
Bird Legs in Middle School So Reed Thin and Now
at Age 65 Just
Warming Up
at the Military
Gym While It’s
Freezing Outside
Yep Leg Pressing
1540 Pounds 12 Reps
With my Arms Raised
to ‘The Heavens’ Not
Even Holding On to
The Machine
A Most Amazing Part
of the Human Condition
Is the Worst Struggles May
Become Our
Greatest Strengths
Indeed Yet True for
me at Least all i Mentioned
Above is Nothing Nothing @ALL
Without the Real Feelings And Senses
oF LoVE iN Peace
Within
To Give to
All Far Beyond
All Dance and Song Alone
Yet Perhaps Being in that DarK
Place Another Functional Disability
in An Assessed Worst Pain and Numb
Shut-in my Bedroom 66 Months Wake
To Sleep Where No Drug Would Give
Relief Other Than A Shallow Small
Gift of Sleep Where Dreams
Provided an Only Escape
If And When they
Ever Came at all
Is Just a Lesson
to Marry The
Night
To Merry The Day
Yet It’s Not Just that
DarK Creates LiGHT
Indeed for
Real
DarK iS LiGHT..:)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well this development warms my heart and gives me hope for the future. Cursive is a unique fine-motor activity that helps create orthographic representations in the brain in a way swiping, tapping and typing cannot. It’s also a solitary activity that can lead to concentration. Longhand writing can serve as a means to deeply thinking one’s own thoughts. It potentially affords one a great deal more privacy in thinking these thoughts. And it can be destroyed. Long live liberty & longhand!
LikeLike