Bonnie Morris has been keeping a journal for roughly 50 years. She used to read thousands of students鈥� essays for the Advanced Placement U.S. History exam. When she grades her students鈥� work, she writes her comments in the margins.
But now, the professor of history at University of California, Berkeley is finding these common practices to be a point of tension: Her students can鈥檛 understand her handwritten feedback. They lament writing out their exam essays by hand. Her graduate student assistants, hired to help her with grading, can鈥檛 read those handwritten exams with the same ease she can.
鈥淚 feel very intimately connected to students when I sit down and write by hand on their paper and go line by line,鈥� Morris said. 鈥淭hat process, which is very familiar to me, I think is changing.鈥�
Researchers say that handwriting is linked to academic success. Historians, like Morris, worry what is lost if people can鈥檛 discern primary sources, which are largely handwritten. Those concerns have reached state education departments and legislatures, with now having some kind of cursive requirement for K-12 schools.
But there are still cohorts of students whose education didn鈥檛 emphasize handwriting and cursive鈥攚ho aren鈥檛 familiar with the curls and swoops and swirls. And a body of marketing research that emphasizes the importance of readable text may spell a movement away from script in some spaces, like a small college in Maryland, which recently became the butt of the joke on late night TV.
A viral moment sparks the discussion around cursive
The push and pull of teaching cursive and penmanship has been ongoing since the mid-2010s, after most states adopted the Common Core State Standards, which did not expressly mention cursive but did emphasize keyboarding. Since then, though, there鈥檚 been a resurgence of cursive and handwriting education.
Less than 10 years ago, only 14 states required schools to teach cursive鈥攂ut that number has been steadily increasing. This year, to legislate the matter, with children expected to be proficient by grade 5 under a measure set to begin next school year. Iowa鈥檚 education department this year also announced .
Despite the uptake of measures, many students, like Morris鈥檚, still struggle with handwriting鈥攄oing their own, and reading others鈥�. Washington College, a small liberal-arts college on Maryland鈥檚 Eastern Shore, had a viral moment online last month after it announced a new logo, leaving behind the old rendering of George Washington鈥檚 cursive signature because it was 鈥渄ifficult to read and not immediately recognizable for many prospective students.鈥�
鈥淚f only there was some sort of institution of learning that could help people understand words!鈥� Stephen Colbert joked last week, the college鈥檚 now-retired logo floating beside him.
It鈥檚 not quite that simple, though. For one, Morris isn鈥檛 convinced students would sign up to take a cursive class in college. Also, it鈥檚 yet another demand on time-strapped elementary teachers, who have historically reported challenges in teaching it. In a of elementary teachers in the early 2000s, just 12 percent of respondents agreed that they had received adequate preparation to teach handwriting in their college classes.
There鈥檚 also an area of research called fluency that looks at how information is processed by the mind, and how that ease shapes judgements, perceptions, and behaviors, said Anoosha Izadi, a professor of management & marketing at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. (It shouldn鈥檛 be confused with reading fluency, in which young children learn to read accurately and efficiently.)
The easier and clearer information is to process, the more people tend to like it, and remember it, she said. That goes for fonts, too.
鈥淪ince students today are often less familiar with cursive and find it harder to read, it lacks fluency,鈥� she wrote in an email. 鈥淎 more readable logo might be more engaging and resonate better with prospective students.鈥�
That鈥檚 essentially the argument Washington College to its virality, citing other legacy brands like Eddie Bauer, a retail company, moving away from cursive for similar reasons.
鈥淭he lack of teaching cursive was, for us, an important but secondary issue,鈥� Brian Speer, the college鈥檚 vice president of marketing and communication, wrote on Oct. 30. 鈥淭he 18th-century script of Washington鈥檚 signature was the primary impediment to legibility because it features letterforms that bear no resemblance to modern scripts.鈥�
Speer concedes there鈥檚 a fondness for the old logo from alumni, and they plan to retain the script to create more dynamic designs, like a watermark. 鈥淏ut,鈥� he continued, 鈥渁s a primary logo, it simply does not work.鈥�
The push for cursive education continues for advocates, researchers, and historians
Before students even get to the point of higher education, researchers are pressing for them to continue learning handwriting and cursive, because of skills gained across disciplines.
Working as an occupational therapist in a Texas school district, Hope McCarroll, a professor in the occupational therapy department at Texas Woman鈥檚 University, said teachers would refer students to her when their handwriting was illegible. McCarroll found that the students had the foundational skills: They could see and understand what they needed to write, they knew the letters and numbers, and they could move their pencil in the correct way. But there was a piece missing.
鈥淲hat I was finding was these teachers didn鈥檛 have resources to actually teach handwriting,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hey were seeing all these difficulties with handwriting in their classrooms, but they didn鈥檛 actually have anything to teach it with, so they weren鈥檛 teaching it.鈥�
She began researching how handwriting impacted academic areas outside of writing. In , McCarroll compared 1st and 2nd graders鈥� writing samples to their report card grades and found that low legibility scores in handwriting correlated with low scores in reading, writing, and math.
The motoric and 鈥渙rthographic mapping鈥� we learn from handwriting鈥攖he process of reading words by sight and spelling from memory鈥攈elps students internalize sound-letter patterns鈥攖hat the letter C could have two sounds. It鈥檚 also important for math: lining up numbers and solving equations, McCarroll said.
In Texas, cursive returned to state education standards , mandating instruction in legible print and legible cursive between kindergarten and 3rd grade.
鈥淛ust the fact that there鈥檚 something in kinder, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade was a huge ordeal, and I feel like a huge win for our kids,鈥� McCarroll said.
As a historian, Morris worries about sending archivists out into the world to collect memorabilia鈥攁nd the roadblocks they鈥檒l hit if they can鈥檛 read handwritten script. For feminist history, for example, there are handwritten notes taken at club meetings, penned softball scores, or notes of women being trained for World War II.
鈥淚f we want to get all that stuff into archives and museums, we need sleuths who collect that material and make it into displays that then visitors to museums are interested in,鈥� she said.
If educators want to incorporate more handwriting education into their lessons, Morris recommends teaching examples of historic diary entries and love letters. People, she notes, are naturally curious about those.
Morris will celebrate 50 years since she started her first journal, writing through the history she has lived. There鈥檚 something fun in drawing the swooping Y or Z or F, something that鈥檚 both art and scholarship, she said.
鈥淚t has connected me, I feel, to all the people over time who have kept diaries or recorded what鈥檚 going on in their time. Right up until this historical moment, in the history of languages, since the invention of writing, people have written by hand, in a written record,鈥� she said. 鈥淚f that changes, if that goes away, 鈥� it would be a terrible loss.鈥�
