The world won't end because the kids can't write cursive.

Since the late 1800s, when the typewriterstruck the first blow to penmanship, handwriting has become an increasingly obsolete skill, and therefore a powerful symbol of the past. It's an idealised past, when Americans supposedly followed uniform models of appearance and behaviour and seemingly obeyed the rules. That may be a big reason why more than 20 state legislatures, most of them in the South, have passed bills encouraging, even mandating, some form of cursive instruction in the schools. During times of cultural upheaval, when the present looks frightening, nostalgia for old-fashioned handwriting surges. For those panicked by our increasingly heterogeneous society and the overturning of traditional norms _ think immigration - the olden days of workbook drills and gold starsfor keeping within the lines can look like a critical anchor in perilous times. What is most important about learning how to write is not sharpening motor skills or reading the Declaration of Independence in a particular font. It's acquiring the ability to communicate.

Responding to the wave of cursive legislation, 'The Dixie Diva,' a column published in newspapers in the South, equated cursive with everything 'civilised and beautiful' and rued that if we can't read handwritten historical documents, then we 'have been lost to a world of family and American history.' Those conservative undertones can turn very dark. One commenter on a Christian home schooling blog warned in 2017 that 'atheists do NOT want cursive taught,' arguing that if people could read 'our historical legal documents,' they would see that 'America was, is and will forever be a Christian nation.' Educationalstandardsthat don't require cursive to be taught are out to bury that truth, she continued, the better to promote 'the LGBTQ lifestyle and the Muslim religion.' Most boosters of cursive don't go down that road, but we need to grasp what drives nostalgia and how it can get in the way of understanding what kind of handwriting instruction makes sense today. To hear many Americans talk about it, you might think the decline of cursive in our schools is handicapping, even endangering our children. Cursive vs technology Learning cursive has 'beneficial effects on the brain,' Sheila Lowe, the president of the American HandwritingAnalysis Foundation,said in January in a letter to the editor of the Baltimore Sun.

'Throughout history, those who could read and write were always on a higher socioeconomic...