Starting this year, California grade school students are required to learn cursive handwriting, after the skill had fallen out of fashion in the computer age. Assembly Bill 446, sponsored by former elementary school teacher Sharon Quirk-Silva and signed into law in October, requires handwriting instruction for the 2.6 million Californians in grades one to six, roughly ages 6 to 12, and cursive lessons for the "appropriate" grade levels - generally considered to be third grade and above. Experts say learning cursive improves cognitive development, reading comprehension and fine motor skills, among other benefits.

FULLERTON, California (Reuters) - A generation of children who learned to write on screens is now going old school.

Starting this year, California grade school students are required to learn cursive handwriting, after the skill had fallen out of fashion in the computer age.

Assembly Bill 446, sponsored by former elementary school teacher Sharon Quirk-Silva and signed into law in October, requires handwriting instruction for the 2.6 million Californians in grades one to six, roughly ages 6 to 12, and cursive lessons for the “appropriate” grade levels - generally considered to be third grade and above.

Experts say learning cursive improves cognitive development, reading comprehension and fine motor skills, among other benefits. Some educators also find value in teaching children to read historic documents and family letters from generations past.

  • @Grass
    1•5 months ago

    I’m not convinced. We learned cursive in like grade 2 or 3 or something and the rest of elementary school we had to do all assignments except for science and math in cursive with a ball point pen. I could do reading comprehension until an assignment asked what the characters were thinking and feeling then I lost marks. I even wrote to one of the still living authors of one of the books and they confirmed the teacher and my own opinions were both significantly different from what they intended but that didn’t overturn my bad marks for lack of understanding. Fine motor skills I owe to my grandma’s arts and crafts and video games she kept when my uncle grew up and left so I can’t really say for that. It didn’t do anything about being picked last in team sports but would that be coarse motor skills? Apart from the 2.5 savant syndrome kids we were all dumb as fuck but at least we could read and write cursive.