Want Smart Kids? Teach Them Cursive Writing!

What's Lost as Handwriting Fades

Some salient points from the article. I've highlighted some major points in red:

Children not only learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand, but they also remain better able to generate ideas and retain information. In other words, it’s not just what we write that matters — but how....

A 2012 study led by Karin James, a psychologist at Indiana University, lent support to that view. Children who had not yet learned to read and write were presented with a letter or a shape on an index card and asked to reproduce it in one of three ways: trace the image on a page with a dotted outline, draw it on a blank white sheet, or type it on a computer. They were then placed in a brain scanner and shown the image again.

Teach Your Kids Cursive, It's Good for their Minds

I recently noticed that the Washington Post held a handwriting contest for kids. Apparently, while the schools are abandoning penmanship making kids permanent slaves to block print, The Post sees some value to cursive writing. (Only the little ones were allowed to submit print samples.)

Personally, I wonder if this is part of the deliberate dumbing down of students. Studies show that those who write in cursive express more complex thoughts and show more complex sentence structure. So cursive is good for the SATS too.

Check it out here....