If the numerous reasons to despise Common Core since its introduction in 2010 weren’t enough — the pornographic sex education, ridiculous math standards that teach political activism rather than math, low English and science standards, including failed reading instruction, et al — students have also been denied the ability to learn cursive handwriting.

Common Core (CC) standards removed cursive writing from the curriculum, allegedly due to a need to focus on all things digital. Standardized testing and teaching to the tests were part of the mix, and cursive writing was a traditional skill the CC reformers thought they could dispose of with little fanfare or pushback.

In 2013, Phyllis Schlafly described CC as “a violation of federal law,” “the mark of a totalitarian government,” “propaganda,” and “encrusted with lies.” She added that CC’s biggest lie of all was that 42 states initially adopted it because they liked the standards, when the the sole reason was actually federal coercion. Phyllis wrote: “CC is foisted on the locals by a combination of bribes, federal handouts, and as the price for getting a waiver to exempt a state from other obnoxious mandates.”

One of CC’s lies was that cursive writing took too much instructional time that could have been spent doing “other things,” likely those to which many parents might have objected. CC proponents also used the pandemic as an excuse to dismiss the need for cursive writing instruction and to place more emphasis on the use of technology for communication.

A University of Southern California education professor asserted in a 2023 Stateline article: “If you are going to spend time on some indication of written communication, keyboarding skills are more important ... In the scheme of educational policies, I’m not sure there’s a single topic I care less about. We’ve fallen behind during COVID, we’re dealing with chronic absenteeism, student mental health is in crisis, and we’re spending time on cursive?”

But many disagree. Deanna Heikkinen of the Rose Writing Center noted on her blog that Common Core created “a very test-centric education system, where every minute is scheduled, leaving little time for skills like handwriting.” But cursive writing “engages both sides of the brain,” she explained, and when researchers test kids using sensors, the results are striking. “[C]ursive lights up more areas of the brain than either printing or typing,” Heikkinen wrote. “This increased brain activity helps with memory and focus, meaning students are more likely to retain what they are writing.”

The cited research further demonstrates a strong connection between cursive and motor skills. Heikkinen stated:

• If you’ve watched a young child learning to print, you’ve probably seen them reverse their b’s and d’s, or struggle with letters that have loops. This often relates to dysgraphia, a difficulty with writing. Interestingly, studies show that kids who learn cursive early are much less likely to have these issues. The continuous motion of cursive helps train the brain and hand to work together more smoothly.

Phyllis Schlafly recognized this in 2013, when she wrote: “Researchers have found that practice with writing letters can improve idea composition and expression, activate the brain, and aid fine motor-skill development.”

A world without cursive

Many view the abandonment of cursive handwriting as a major loss, the ramifications of which are not fully realized. An essay on the website of the National Museum of American History dates the development of cursive writing instruction for American schoolchildren to the 1840s, with widespread teaching beginning in U.S. schools in 1850.

This article traces the evolution of handwriting “from quill to slate pencil to ink pen” to use of the typewriter beginning in the early 1900s. With the introduction of computers, penmanship took a further backseat to electronic communications, such as email.

While penmanship was on the decline before the advent of Common Core, the CC standards signaled the final death knell for teaching cursive writing in public schools. The Del Ray, VA Patch pointed out that without the knowledge of cursive, “today’s students are unable to read founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights — let alone handwritten notes from their grandparents and great-grandparents.”

In fact, some experts say, the phasing out of a centuries-long means of communication could trigger a whole range of problems from failure to accurately decipher handwritten legal and historical documents to the inability to read a handwritten missive from a bygone era.

Even the famous podcaster and left-leaning pundit, Joe Rogan, weighed in on the demise of handwriting: “We’ve kind of abandoned cursive,” he observed. “So, if people in the future go to read ancient scripts of human beings that lived in the 20th Century, they’ll be like, ‘What is this...’”

Rogan continued: “Think about it. Our grandchildren [are] trying to read those immigration docs of their ancestors, which are both recorded and signed in cursive. But instead of easily seeing the port and country of origin? They’re looking at it like an archaeologist staring at a wall of fascinating hieroglyphics.”

The resurgence

As of 2025, half of all U.S. states require students to learn cursive handwriting. A report appearing on mycursive.com provides a reference guide with details on each state’s requirements. The website notes: “It seems more state legislators and education leaders realize a potential need to preserve the art. In fact, the past 9 years or so have been very active.”

Visitors to the group’s Cursive News Archives page can find information on individual state actions and on the topic in general. Both blue and red states are among the 25 that mandate the instruction, including Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Most states require that cursive handwriting be taught between 3rd and 5th grades, with some, such as Kentucky, requiring its introduction as early as 1st grade. Proficiency is typically required by 5th grade. In Louisiana, the teaching of cursive begins in 3rd grade and continues through 12th grade. Mississippi specifies that instruction begin in 2nd grade and continue through 8th grade.

Some states that do not mandate the teaching of cursive by law do include the expectation of such instruction in their state learning standards. For example, Missouri’s education standards set the expectation that students will learn to write legibly in cursive in the 2nd and 3rd grades, but it is not a state legal requirement.

The Missouri House of Representatives introduced HB375 last December to legally require the teaching of cursive, but after two readings the bill is stalled and currently not on the House calendar.

As previously noted, the push to revive the teaching of cursive is supported by research. In 2023, Reader’s Digest summarized studies that showed handwritten note taking as opposed to typing notes on a computer actually helped students retain more content detail, even though the writers captured fewer words of a lecture than the typists did. “Students who take handwritten notes need to quickly process the lesson and rewrite it in a way they can understand, giving them an advantage in remembering new concepts long-term.”

These studies further showed that “students with handwritten notes were able to remember and still understand the concepts of the lecture after a week had passed.” The article concluded that, clearly, “writing by hand is one of the little things that can make you smarter.”

The AI connection

Perhaps ironically, the technological advances that allegedly made cursive writing obsolete may be a catalyst for bringing it back. A relatively new problem has arisen, particularly in higher education, which is that students are cheating their way through college using artificial intelligence (AI); specifically OpenAI’s ChatGPT, launched in 2022.

A May 23 article in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) pointed out that when this year’s college graduates were freshmen, “there was no such thing as ChapGPT.” Students had to do their own homework and research, write their own term papers, and now “they can just use artificial intelligence.” As one college professor opined, “AI-assisted writing is like ‘going to the gym and having robots lift the weights for you.’”

The WSJ explained that the reintroduction of the “blue book,” an exam booklet with a blue cover and blank pages, may be enough to derail the AI-spawned cheating that has exploded since the advent of ChatGPT. It would force students to write out their own answers, preferably in cursive, which is much faster than printing. It also means students would actually need to study and learn the material in order to fill the pages with their own words.

A return to the blue book, or whatever the color of the cover happens to be, won’t be easy, but there’s a new demand for them, and business is booming for companies like “Roaring Spring Paper Products,” a family owned business in Pennsylvania. Today’s college students aren’t used to writing on paper — and the handwritten exams put a burden on professors trying to read their chicken scratch. Still, taking exams and writing essays on laptops nowadays almost guarantees cheating.

One professor told The WSJ that when he used the blue books for an in-class essay, giving his students a prompt in advance so they could prepare but not allowing them to bring their notes, it “worked so well that [he] is sticking with blue books next year.”

While other professors have followed suit, an article on Gizmodo.com says the return of blue books isn’t “a fix-all for the broad variety of ills caused by students’ AI-use.” The article quoted a blog post of Philip D. Bunn, assistant professor at Covenant College in Georgia. Bunn posted that before AI, “the traditional essay was a great indicator of a student’s intellectual capacity and was very difficult to fake unless you went to the trouble of hiring a ghostwriter.” He believes the in-class blue book exam cannot replicate the traditional essay written outside of class, and that “something serious is lost if we give up entirely on the traditional essay” because of ChatGPT cheating.

Some believe the only solution is to enact new laws and regulations surrounding the use of AI, which may ultimately happen but will take time, and in any case may prove difficult to police. The key may be to require that important assignments as well as in-class exams be handwritten in cursive.

As Phyllis Schlafly Eagles associate, Dr. Bruce Schlafly, observed: “We’ve been told that it is no longer necessary to teach handwriting in elementary schools, since the computer keyboard has replaced the written word. But not so fast. With colleges returning to handwritten exams to combat the use of artificial intelligence to cheat by students using a computer, elementary schools will have to begin teaching handwriting again.”

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