I’m the living proof; cursive writing garners better grades, it got me a B+. I was in high school; it was History class with Mrs. Moore. I never did a stitch of homework in her class, but I aced every test, hence the B+. How did I get a B+, ace every test, whilst never doing any homework or studying? You may very well ask. It worked like this: Mrs. Moore was devastatingly boring, she spoke in a monotone that you would zone out to, but (and here’s the kicker) she would put her notes (in an outline format) on the overhead projector, then would proceed to read them verbatim in class, whilst I, using my cursive handwriting motor skill, wrote down everything she said, everything I heard, everything I read, all at the same time. It was the trifecta. Hearing it read aloud, while I was both taking notes in cursive writing and following along by looking up at the screen was me engaging in deep processing through Elaborative rehearsal. That’s how I was able to recall that information on the tests, because I was employing all those corresponding parts of my brain. That’s the story I’m sticking with too. But here’s how I know I’m right.
When I first heard (however many years ago) that “they” (The Powers That Be) had decided to stop teaching cursive handwriting, I remember thinking “Great, now we will raise generations of functionally illiterate people.” When one considers that students who have not been taught and been made to practice cursive writing, not only are missing the skill, but are unable to read cursive writing, like such important documents as the U.S. Constitution, then arguably I’m right. Somewhere along the way, I had heard that researchers were conducting studies about the neurological effects of not learning and using cursive writing. I blamed the anti-cursive writing curriculum for the complete lack of creativity over the last 20 years. I mean, how many iterations of the Spiderman story do we need to see on the silver screen? It’s not even like there has been a spate of time in between films, the retelling of the same story. I also blamed the anti-cursive writing curriculum for the lack of critical thinking in the younger generation. It is my contention that critical thinking forms the foundation for what we used to call common sense, which in my opinion, no longer exists.
The most recent study published in 2020 in the peer-reviewed journal “Frontiers in Psychology” demonstrates my thesis that cursive writing gets better grades (well, that’s my interpretation of the results). The findings confirm that the physical act of writing in cursive, whether it was pen and paper, or stylus and an interactive computer screen, resulted in the children learning more and remembering better, (Eva Ose Askvik et al., 2020, vol. 11)
The experiment consisted of 45 trials, using 15 words with varying degrees of difficulty, and the subjects were instructed to either write the word in cursive (using a digital pen, writing directly on the screen), to type the word, using the right index finger to type on the keyboard, or to draw the word freehand directly on the computer screen. The resulting data showed that cursive handwriting primed the brain for learning and stimulated more electrical activity in the parietal lobe and central regions.
“Existing literature suggests that such oscillatory neuronal activity in these particular brain areas is important for memory and for the encoding of new information and, therefore, provides the brain with optimal conditions for learning.” (Eva Ose Askvik et al., 2020, vol. 11)
I stipulate that the studies weren’t about measuring the effects of typing, and/ or swiping in the digital age on the brain’s creative capacity, but I have no doubt that those studies are well underway.
References:
Bergland, C. (2020, October 2). Why cursive handwriting is good for your brain | psychology today [E-magazine]. Psychology Today; Sussex Publishers, LLC. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/202010/why-cursive-handwriting-is-good-your-brain
Eva Ose Askvik, F. R. (Ruud) van der Weel, & Audrey L. H. van der Meer. (2020). The Importance of Cursive Handwriting Over Typewriting for Learning in the Classroom: A High-Density EEG Study of 12-Year-old Children and Young Adults. Frontiers in Psychology, 11. https://doi.org/DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01810
You make a compelling case regarding the seemingly lost art of cursive and the recent notable decline of elaborate calligraphy styles. Cursive, devised as one of the first modalities of written language, dates back to the Roman Empire; the tradition utilized quills as writing instruments to construct historical relics such as the Declaration of Independence and letters from Civil War soldiers. Despite undergoing several stylistic revisions, penmanship reigned supreme into the late 1980s, giving birth to a generation of writers adept at Zaner-Bloser and D’Nealian cursive, the two most prominent grade-school education efforts to maintain cursive literacy in the second half of the twentieth-century (Hellekson, 2022). Ultimately, the technological revolution effectively reduced the demand for this skill, leading the U.S. government to officially remove cursive from its required Common Core K-12 curriculum in 2010 (Martin & Kaur, 2022).
Science supports the notion that both manuscript and cursive writing are superior to typography in their ability to enhance information retention and strengthen cognitive development. Brain imaging suggests cursive uniquely utilizes “functional specialization,” or the capacity for optimal efficiency, to activate multiple regions of the brain; Indiana University research on pre-literate five-year-olds demonstrated an improvement in neural activity and activation of the “reading circuit” during physical handwriting that was not observed in typists (Klemm, 2013). Research surrounding haptics further supports the cursive method, as it “helps train the brain to integrate visual information, tactile information, and fine motor dexterity,” leading to faster expression and personal style emergence. Experts agree that the lack of fine motor skills and simultaneous activity associated with typing remain significantly less valuable than the traditional pen-and-paper approach (Klemm, 2013).
Technology continues to infringe on the benefits offered by conventional writing techniques. Voice-to-text, the latest threat to the sanctity of physical writing, is largely devoid of mental cognition and requires minimal input from the note-taker. Those who elect to engage in hands-free documentation risk further isolation from the learning processes proven to establish genuine cognition. Moreover, neuroscientists at the University of Tokyo investigated the effects of analog versus digital writing in an attempt to dismantle inaccurate convictions related to the perceived benefits of technology. Notably, researchers found volunteers using paper completed the given tasks nearly twenty-five percent faster than their counterparts assigned tablets (Umejima et al., 2021). Professor Kuniyoshi L. Sakai states that paper is more advantageous than electronic documents in that it “contains more one-of-a-kind information for stronger memory recall”; it comprises spatially complex information that allows for “tangible permanence, irregular strokes, and uneven shape, like folded corners” (Umejima et al., 2021).
Hellekson, N. (2022, June 4). The twisted history of cursive writing. Hallard Press, LLC. https://hallardpress.com/the-twisted-history-of-cursive-writing/#:~:text=It%20goes%20as%20far%20back,changed%20since%20the%20fifth%20century
Klemm, W. R. (2013, March 14). Why writing by hand could make you smarter. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/memory-medic/201303/why-writing-hand-could-make-you-smarter
Martin, M., & Kaur, G. (2022, December 3). What students lost since cursive writing was cut from the Common Core Standards. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2022/12/03/1140610714/what-students-lost-since-cursive-writing-was-cut-from-the-common-core-standards#:~:text=It%20is%20a%20fact%20that,keyboard%20has%20become%20more%20important
Umejima, K., Ibaraki, T., Yamazaki, T., & Sakai, K. L. (2021, February 15). Paper Notebooks vs. mobile devices: Brain activation differences during memory retrieval. Frontiers. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2021.634158/full