Mandatory cursive instruction? According to California, yes.

A bill signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, in effect January 1, 2024, requires cursive instruction in 1st - 6th grades.

As a pediatric occupational therapist, I appreciate this renewed focus on cursive handwriting instruction in school. For many kids in our practice, cursive handwriting is faster and easier than printing. The flow of cursive writing can decrease the chances of poor letter alignment and poor letter spacing within words, improving legibility. Writing speed can increase since they are picking up their pencil from the paper less often when using cursive rather than print. Kids can also have fun developing their own “signature” which is something adulthood still tends to require of us and doesn’t seem to be going away. Additionally, learning to write in cursive helps kids with reading cursive writing. Since many historical documents are written in cursive handwriting, this provides multi-modal opportunities for learning. Kids can not only read to comprehend the writings, but they may also gain personal connections with the the authors. There is something about cursive handwriting that brings us a little closer to the person and the text.

As if there weren’t enough reasons for an OT to promote handwriting, a recent study from Johns Hopkins University by Wiley & Rapp (2021) showed that the act of handwriting engages different parts of the brain leading to quicker learning. This is not specific to cursive, but we can confidently say that handwriting in any form creates connections in the brain that just don’t happen with keyboarding or voice-to-text.

“Our results clearly show that handwriting compared with non-motor practice produces faster learning and greater generalization to untrained tasks than previously reported.”(Wiley & Rapp, 2021)

Occupational therapists can help kids who may be struggling with print or cursive writing. We analyze the components of writing. beyond letter formation. We look at posture, strength, endurance, bilateral integration, visual & fine motor skills, and executive functioning abilities that are all parts of this seemingly simple task.