Some Schools Dropping Cursive Writing Under Common Core

The Joplin (MO) Globe (11/17, Younker) reports that cursive handwriting "is slowly losing ground in elementary school curricula as technology invades the classroom. The Common Core Standards, a set of national education standards that have been adopted by most states, including Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma, do not specifically require that cursive handwriting be taught in classrooms." The piece notes that the Common Core Standards "include keyboarding skills," but not cursive writing. "Locally, most districts include cursive, but many administrators say that the specific skill of writing in cursive is declining in importance in a digital era, when students are more tech-savvy than their predecessors and may prefer a computer keyboard to a pencil and paper."