Cursive may be back on the schedule in some Minnesota schools after a lawmaker proposed offering up some grant money to schools willing to teach the once-necessary skill, MPR News is reporting.
For years now, schools across the country have been pulling cursive from the curriculum for a variety of reasons. With the ever-expanding plate of skills elementary-school kids need to have under their belts - keyboarding and internet safety, for example - classroom instruction time is limited, and something has to go. Then there's the fact that cursive's usefulness in this day and age is a matter of debate - more on that in a few paragraphs. And of course, there's the old bugaboo money: classroom instruction time and materials cost money, and these days public schools scratch and claw for every dime. Spending those dimes on what many see as an archaic and outdated discipline simply isn't in the cards.
That's why in Minnesota, most schools have dropped teaching cursive.
Not all parents and educators have been happy with that decision. Just ask Senator Ann Rest, who recently sent a handwritten note to a teenage constituent.
"He said, 'You'll have to read this to me.' I understand that penmanship is a hard skill for a lot of young people, but they at least ought to be able to read it."
