Reminisce back to third grade, to when the achieved loop of an uppercase “B” in cursive meant you had succeeded in class.

For many elementary students, that achievement will cease to exist. Since 2010, a total of 45 states are on board with the Common Core Standards Curriculum, according to the Conway Daily Sun. This nationwide curriculum does not require cursive to be taught in schools, but instead leaves it up to the individual states to teach this wondrous skill of connecting letters in a beautiful arrangement. That being said, most states are leaning toward excluding or have already excluded the teaching of cursive in their curriculum.

This is a disappointment, to say the least. It represents not only the loss of an artistic skill, but also of a piece of our culture.

Cursive has been around for centuries: our grandparents write in cursive, professors write in cursive and our parents may write in cursive. They have the ability to do this because it was taught to them throughout their schooling as a mainstay in education for generations.

Nowadays, technology is the answer to everything. With the advent of the keyboard, some people believe that good penmanship is now unnecessary. What those individuals fail to realize is that cursive has its benefits.

In a study shown by the College Board, the organization that scores the SATs, students who wrote in cursive during the 25-minute essay portion scored slightly higher than those who wrote in print. This is because cursive gives rise to greater speed and efficiency, which helps develop thoughts and leads to more focus on ideas.

It is also proven that the ability to write in cursive boosts brain activity, and members of Handwriting without Tears, an organization that promotes the use of cursive, agree.

According to Suzanne Asherson, an advocate for the organization and holder of an Occupational Therapy Doctorate, “learning to write cursive is shown to improve brain development in the areas of thinking, language and working memory.”

When people are equipped with the skillset and knowledge of cursive, they become better critical thinkers and have stronger comprehension and participation skills. Studies also show that cursive stimulates the brain’s synapses and synchronicity in the left and right hemisphere, according to Asherson.

If the idea of being able to write more efficiently and faster does not make you want to read and write in cursive, then consider that most historical documents are written in the flowing script.

Without the ability to read cursive handwriting, reading such documents would be a real challenge. Documents like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and practically anything written before the current century would be illegible. Even with our language rapidly becoming electronic, it says something of our culture if we cannot experience and understand our own written word firsthand.

Although I agree that being able to type on a keyboard is important, I also believe that keeping cursive alive is even more so. Students who can read and write cursive, with all its artistic flourishes, are better off than those who cannot.

Even on our own campus, those who know cursive are able to read their professors handwriting and aren’t forced to go to office hours just to decipher the corrections written on an assignment.

Cursive, though seemingly inconsequential, is still a vital piece of our culture and society, and should be treated as such.

-Marissa Mararac is a junior communication major from Tacoma. She can be contacted at 335-2290 or by [email protected]. The opinions expressed in this Column are not necessarily those of the staff of The Daily Evergreen or those of Student Publications.