Where I live writing in cursive is taught in schools as soon as you start elementary school. In middle school and high school you’re pretty much forced to use it because teachers often would read out loud some studying material and you had to write notes very quickly (not sure if this has changed though).
I watched a video on Youtube couple days ago and they were asking high schoolers to read some cursive text and they were having trouble doing so. I didn’t want to make any assumptions so this is why I’m asking here.
(btw I’m not arguing that cursive is more useful than print or whatever, in fact a lot of people have bad handwriting which makes things harder when it comes to important documents)
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My kids have both had it in school this past school year.im sure there are schools that don’t teach it anymore, but our district is small so they still teach the kids how to read, write, and sign their names in cursive.
It is still taught in some places but not everywhere. Cursive was removed from federal education guidelines like a decade ago but there are something like 20 states that require students to learn cursive.
Depends on the school.
My daughter is learning it.
Weirdly her cursive is waaay better than her print handwriting.
There is no national US curriculum. It varies by state, by locality, by school, and maybe even by teacher.
That said, I think it’s likely that emphasis on cursive writing has dropped significantly in recent years.
Like all education related things, it varies by school. Many have indeed stopped teaching it.
I am of the age where I learned it in elementary school, but by the time I got to high school, all our assignments has to be printed on computer. The utility of cursive was minimal.
Cursive has been going out of fashion for decades. I graduated in 2003 and was taught cursive, but I was not allowed to use cursive on school work outside of personal notes, signatures, and tests specifically on cursive. Any Essays had to be in print, or were typed. Tests had to be in print or were on scantrons.
Cursive has higher speed and better use of energy when writing with ink. Specifically when using quill pens, calligraphy pens, and fountain pens. but with “lower flow” higher capacity self contained modern pens there is virtually no speed gained by using cursive over block printing.
So teaching cursive really is only needed for those interested in studying historical documents which means it can be a subunit at a later age for those interested rather than a major unit taught to all at a young age.
Some schools around me either dropped cursive all together or started teaching Spanish instead
It’s kind of come and gone and come back. One of my kids didn’t really get it in school.
There’s definitely a prevailing sentiment that it shouldn’t be, but school curricula are very slow to change, so lots of places still do it.
Since leaving school, other than signing my name, I think I probably only even *use a pen* like… A few times a year? Why would I want to know cursive
My oldest was taught it briefly in 1st or 2nd grade, but it was quickly forgotten. To my knowledge, my youngest has never been taught it, but she has asked me a few questions about it.
It isn’t required in Indiana.
People can also learn things on their own outside of school
I had to learn it because I was homeschooled at the time, and I know other people who had to learn it in their private school. When I went to public high school, some kids knew it and others didn’t.
Yes. They stopped when my daughter was in grade school. So, around 15 years ago
my son was not taught cursive. we live in missouri.
My kids learned it in elementary school for 1-2 years and never used it again. Lots of typed work here
In California it is taught in theory, but because it’s not assessed most elementary teachers don’t spend much/ any time on it. So many high school students don’t know it well.
I have a strong preference for cursive but I often can’t use it because it confuses a significant percentage (though probably not a majority) of my students.
When I was a kid (late 90s), we learned cursive in second grade. By third grade, they said we don’t care how you write as long as it’s legible. Some continued in cursive, some (like myself) went back to print. I was never asked to write in cursive again.
Outside of signing your name, I can’t think of a reason to learn cursive other than curiosity. I learned it in school, but I’ll be damned if I can write it now.
I learned it in elementary and still use it today over print. I think schools should teach because (I have no website) I’ve been told by teachers that learning how to read and write is easier if kids start with cursive before learning print.
I was the last age group in Indiana to learn cursive before they brought it back in.. I think 2020? Even then we only learnt it for 1 week then never touched it again nor was it required anywhere.
To tell you the truth, I don’t really see a reason to continue pushing that writing format outside of people trying to be fancy (but those people will do it whether you teach them or not but even then they use scripts that would never be taught in schools) or signatures. Even then, most people don’t use proper cursive for signatures they just make something up for themselves.
In terms of who I’ve seen use it practically daily: near nobody below the age of 50. I personally associate it with how old people write. Kind of how in the same vain I associate telling time like, “quarter past till” with old people. Of course, unlike time where I have 0 clue what those stupid terms mean, I can read cursive fine.
[Also, legally only 21/50 U.S still states mandate cursive.](https://mycursive.com/the-14-states-that-require-cursive-writing-state-by-state/)
Cursive is required to be taught in my state. The kids learn it usually around third grade. The teachers make them use it for a year or two and then it is never required again.
My kids both hated learning it and can’t use it (they can’t even write their names in cursive).
I was also taught cursive (also disliked it and couldn’t read it without severe struggle) but because I was forced to use it throughout my entire school career, I can still write it- my writing just really sucks. I never use it unless forced. Typing is so much more efficient. My cursive writing was always very slow and awful.
In 1998, I was seven years old. I began learning cursive. For the next two years, we took lessons in English to read and write in it. When I hit fifth grade in 2001, our teacher said that we were not to write in cursive, as it was mostly illegible to her since 10 year olds can’t write well in cursive.
She pushed to have us use computers to type out reports and papers that we had to turn in. We even started taking typing classes. Taking notes in school today, people can type a lot faster than someone can write in any format. Or you can download a copy of the presentation should they make it available.
I went to private school during most of elementary and we learned how to write in cursive in 2nd and 3rd grade(went to public school after 3rd), this was about 10 years ago so it just depends, I don’t think it’s taught in many public schools though. I never really used it after 3rd grade either lol
My son (14) learned it but rarely uses it in school now as most of his work is digital. He does use it to make notes for story ideas.
I was briefly taught cursive writing in 2nd Grade after that they dropped cursive as part of the curriculum. My class was the last ones to be taught cursive in the school district I went to.
I can’t write cursive (with the exception of my name) to this day, everything I write is written in print and in all caps, I stopped writing lowercase letters. Just smaller uppercases.
Most American schools do teach it, although not for the same length of time as in the past. There are only so many minutes in the school day. Advances in tech mean we also need to find time for things like keyboarding and computer applications at much earlier ages.
Like others said, it depends entirely on the school. My elementary school taught us the whole year, so I manage to learn a bit. Though I do notice that unless someone’s 35+ chances are, they most likely can’t write or read it
I have mixed feelings about the decline of cursive instruction. Something has to come out of school curricula as new things come in. And, I know that the emphasis on handwriting when I was in school many (so many) years ago was really rough on some kids. The idea that good penmanship had something to do with intelligence or good character was well on its way out by that time, but it wasn’t completely gone.
That said, I work with historic documents for a living. Someone with basic elementary-school education in cursive can read most documents written in English from the past 200 or so years. With a bit of extra effort and practice, they can back a century or two further. Someone without that education might struggle to read a letter that is written today. That’s a real loss, but maybe an unavoidable one.
It’s dependent on the school honestly. I graduated high school last year and went to a public school until high school. We were learning it in second grade, but a lot of students were having trouble with it. So rather than spending extra time on it, they pushed it off and didn’t finish teaching us. I can do mock cursive and can sign my name for documents but my parents definitely complain about my penmanship
When I was in school, they stopped teaching cursive about halfway through elementary school (this was roughly 25 years ago) and there was no mention of it in middle and high school. Typing skills were taught in its place. My cursive skills never got to the point that writing in cursive was faster than writing in print, so me having to take notes quickly was actually a discouragement from writing in cursive.
I was taught cursive in the third grade around 2009. However, after that, it was never enforced or continued, which sucked. As of today, I can read and write cursive but it’s really rusty. I can’t however read my grandmother’s cursive because its so slanted and close together.
Depends on where you are, but yeah it’s often being skipped.
Hell even 20-something years ago I used it for one year in one class and was firmly instructed to print or type everything else for the rest of my student career.
A lot of people had something like that even where it was “taught” and just never picked up the habit of actually using it or practiced enough for it to be faster.
My son was taught cursive in like 4th grade, but never again used it. He’s 26 now.
Personally, I don’t think I’ve used cursive since college although sometimes when I print fast the result ends up looking a lot like cursive.
God, I hope so.
My experience with cursive is pretty much the same as everyone else’s here: taught in 3rd grade in 2008 where it was near-ruthlessly enforced, and then no one said a damn thing about it from 4th grade onward.
While notes were handwritten for most of the remainder of my education, we all copied powerpoints verbatim, so teachers would just give us a bit of extra time to finish copying everything down. In my junior year, they started giving everyone laptops and posting the powerpoints online, so there wasn’t really a point to copying anything down.
Personally, I can read maybe 75% at most of any given text written in cursive, but my cursive handwriting is probably about the same if not worse than when I was 9. Doing something very consistently for 9 months sounds like a surefire way to become proficient, but it means nothing if you then have virtually no exposure to or use for said thing for the following decade. Even during those 9 months, the only cursive we ever read aside from our own handwriting was either printed in a textbook or very deliberately written by our teacher to be legible to beginners of a new writing system. We were never required to read the chicken scratch of a teacher or professor who could assume we knew cursive let alone historical documents. Even while I was learning cursive, everything I read outside of the brief cursive lessons was typed.
It’s always been bizarre to see the typed screeds of the elderly about how much of an apocalyptic catastrophe it is that Kids These Days™ can’t read or write in cursive when they’ve never bothered to prove or create its relevancy or even just making it mandatory long enough for the lessons to stick. I get that lamenting the childhoods of those younger than you is something that naturally comes with age, but I think it’s reasonable to expect self-awareness to come along with it.
My kids aren’t in school, yet. I’d prefer they not learn cursive and instead spend that time learning a more valuable skill, like beginner programming or typing or something. Cursive seems like such an unnecessary skill. Why waste time on it?
There are a lot of benefits to leaning cursive at a young age, according to my wife (occupational therapist who works mostly with children). It’s great for hand eye coordination, fine motor control, and has many other benefits.
Of course so does video gaming.
It’s true, I’m 16 and was never taught it; frankly I really don’t see much use for it. Print is much easier and more legible.
no clue, im 27 and i learned cursive in 3rd grade. i remember my teacher telling us that we had to learn it now because in 5th grade they require you to always write in cursive. Got to 5th grade and no such thing. but i learned cursive and only wrote in cursive all the way throughout school. My teachers hates me lol
It was taught in 4th grade for me and we did a lot more with it in 5th grade but that was about it. I don’t think it was required in my state
I believe it’s still taught in my area, but I’m not sure. Maybe its usage just isn’t as enforced as it used to be. I’ve seen my boss’s youngest daughter write her name in cursive, and she’s maybe around 10-12yo.