According to USA Today, many states are no longer requiring handwriting instruction. Given that the Common Core has shifted the emphasis to technologically dependent skills, such keyboarding training, that is understandable. However, the advantages of handwriting in general and cursive in particular have long been established. In addition to its positive impacts on brain development, handwriting promotes the development of children’ fine motor and dexterity skills as well as their engagement and retention. Cursive writing is also advantageous for students with learning difficulties, according to study.
Here are a few advantages that pupils can gain from learning cursive.
Brain conditioning
A University of Washington study found that teaching pupils to print, write in cursive, and type on a keyboard all help students’ brains develop. However, cursive writing training in particular appears to have the most brain impacts.
The main distinction is that, in contrast to printing or typing, cursive writing activates brain synapses and the synchrony between the two sides of the brain. According to Texas A&M University’s William Klemm, a distinguished professor of neuroscience, “Handwriting (cursive writing) dynamically activates vast portions of both cerebral hemispheres.” He makes use of brain imaging studies that demonstrate considerable brain activation during handwriting in areas related to thinking, language, and working memory.
Expert in handwriting Jeanette Farmer makes a compelling case for scheduling time for cursive education. According to her, “Handwriting has a physiological/psychological relationship in the brain.” The influence of repeatedly moving the thumb and fingers over time on the developing brain is so great that nothing else taught in the classroom even comes close to matching it.
Mental training
Students’ handwriting helps them understand material more deeply and with higher retention. It stands to reason that pupils who create things by hand would take more time to process them and be better able to remember them.
Because cursive writing requires concentrated concentration, learning how to do it is important. Each letter’s structure must first be considered by a youngster before learning how to mechanically reproduce it. Building a foundation for literacy learning through repetition of this dynamic process.
For older students as well, this is valid. “Students who take notes on a laptop tend to reproduce lectures verbatim, while students who take notes by hand process material and reinterpret it in their own terms, reinforcing learning,” claim researchers Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer.
Kinesthetic advantages
Cursive writing requires children to match their fine motor skills with their visual and tactile processing abilities. Pen to paper physical contact creates muscle memory, which is the basis for learning. Knowing how to write in cursive needs an understanding of not only letter structure but also of connections and curves. This calls for the development of hand-eye coordination, a talent necessary to learn how to play an instrument, engage in sports, utilize tools, and even master a computer keyboard.
Benefits for kids who struggle with learning
Cursive may be especially helpful for people with neurological impairments including dyslexia and dysgraphia, according to a 2012 research. An imbalance between the brain’s auditory and language centers is the root cause of dyslexia. Writing in cursive has the effect of bringing these two brain centers to work together, as mentioned ealier. Additionally, it has been demonstrated that students with dysgraphia, a condition marked by difficulty with motor control in writing, have benefited from cursive writing because of its connected letters and flowing motion.
Knowing that teachers only have so many hours in the day and that other priorities are determined by standards, the overwhelming body of research demonstrates that teaching pupils to write in cursive has significant advantages. We must invest in teaching cursive writing by setting up a few minutes each week.
