I was shocked to read that Indiana schools will no longer teach cursive handwriting, stating that teaching and practice take up precious time when students could be learning something else. The death of cursive would be a real loss to society.

Handwriting improves fine motor skills and increases brain activity in kids. It engages different parts of the brain than keyboarding, much the way I imagine drawing or painting would. The LA Times reports in a recent article on Why Handwriting Matters:

Handwriting can change how children learn and their brains develop. IU researchers used neuroimaging scans to measure brain activation in preliterate preschool children… After four weeks of training, the kids who practiced writing showed brain activation similar to an adult’s… The practice also improved letter recognition, which is the No. 1 predictor of reading ability at age 5.

That’s important stuff! Since funds for teaching of the arts is often being cut in schools, it makes sense that handwriting would be next. How unfortunate. Handwriting is an art. It’s also a mirror to a person’s personality, since it’s not only a product of the brain and hand, but the mind and body as well. Every deviation from the copybook script we were taught in school reflects something about our personality, and the farther the deviation, the more creative or innovative the writer is. We develop our own fashion of linking letters and forming loops, and also use varying degrees of slant, size and pressure. Some rare individuals have handwriting that is a near duplicate of the copybook script, but even this says something about the writer. Our handwriting is in essence a portrait of ourselves, as unique as our fingerprints and facial features.

 Although I use a computer for my fiction writing, I make frequent use of my handwriting skills. I fill spiral bound notebooks with plot ideas, character descriptions, outlines and notes. I still write first drafts of poems by hand. I write letters, thank you notes and other forms of correspondence by hand. I write shopping lists by hand. Even if I forget my list, I’m more inclined to remember what I need to purchase than if I’d made a mental note (or if I’d checked off items from a printed list—which my husband insists would be easier. I disagree).

I can’t imagine not having learned how to make that step from the printed word to cursive writing. I suppose I would have invented my own way of linking letters for speed, but I don’t know how legible such writing would be.

What, if anything, do you write by hand? How are your handwriting skills? Is your cursive script different from the copybook script you learned in school?