The importance of learning cursive

Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva, D-Fullerton, who authored Assembly Bill 446, which created the new guidelines, perked up when asked, but made it clear it’s not just middle schoolers but an entire decade of students who basically lost the skill.

“It’s a good amount of kids,” she said.

Quirk-Silva was a former educator and always understood the essentials of education and used to use the hashtags, #oldschool #newschool.

“My age insisted on some basic education instruction. Have a book in hand, write in cursive, memorize multiplication and subtraction tables,” she said. “Other cultures didn’t let it lapse because it’s basic skills, but we did.”

Learning cursive also builds motor skills, enhances brain development and is needed in everyday life to sign documents and read old documents, letters and recipes. It was still taught in schools, but only by certain teachers, who were typically older, and was no longer required because of the adoption of the common core curriculum, which de-emphasized it in lieu of keyboarding.

“Third or fourth grade is the typical age it was formally taught,” she said. “The new curriculum was more into tech, so you saw it get dropped.”

Quirk-Silva said Gov. Jerry Brown was in favor of her first bill to mandate it but she couldn’t get it past the Education Committee chair. Fast-forward to 2023, and a different chair did not get in her way. The law went into effect in 2024, and now mandates some cursive instruction in grades one to six.

Some thought has gone into catching middle schoolers up to speed, and it could be done during a free period or advisory period, she said.

“That’s a great place for it, those starting and ending periods, where students can enjoy the drill and skill,” she said.

And addressing the older group may be something she would be interested in talking to a younger legislator about since she is near the end of her term.

For now, it could be presented as an extracurricular or as a special program, she said.

“Kids really like it,” she said. “They like playing around with it.”

Any educators out there interested in sharing their thoughts on the return of cursive instruction? How can we best bring this generation up to speed? Or is the emphasis on cursive not really worth it? Let me know!

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I’ve written about spelling and grammar, and now the importance of cursive instruction. Soon I will write about certain shifts in our language and how to either accommodate our evolving language or hold on to certain rules — specifically regarding the word whom (this is what is known as a cliffhanger!).

But did you know the diphthong was essential to the shift from middle English to modern English during the great vowel shift of 1400 to 1700? It happened to coincide with the invention of the printing press in 1440, but its cause has been attributed to migration and the influence of the romantic languages after movement spurred by the Black Plague. Though there has been some controversy over that theory.

Diphthongs, of course, are the sounds created by two vowels next to each other and one of the reasons why English is so tricky when it comes to spelling.

Is this important to know? I think so, but others might differ and suggest that coding is more important because of, well, you know, STEM and all those tech jobs out there. But times are changing, and AI is taking over a lot of coding jobs. That could create even more coding jobs, or it could get rid of them as quantum computers take over. But you know what doesn’t seem to be going away? Work emails. And those are written in English, most of them at least.

Besides, our language is fun and interesting. And always changing.

So what will be our age’s diphthong? And please don’t tell me it’s an emoji or GIF.