Cursive could be written into Maine law under new bill

Feb. 27—After watching her teacher trace the downward and upward curves of a capital C on the chalkboard, 9-year-old Camille Lebeis turned her attention to her cursive workbook.

The third grader at St. Brigid School in Portland moved her pencil slowly across the paper, practicing the letter before moving on to the word “Catholic.” She looks forward to her daily cursive lesson, especially on the days when she gets to practice her favorite letters.

“It kind of looks fancier than printing,” she said. “It’s cool.”

Once ubiquitous in American elementary schools, lessons like this have become less common in Maine. In recent years, cursive has been displaced in many schools to make time for modern skills like keyboarding and other educational priorities.

An Aroostook County lawmaker would like to see that change.

Rep. Joseph Underwood, R-Presque Isle, is sponsoring a bill that would require all elementary students to receive cursive instruction from third to fifth grade. The Education and Cultural Affairs Committee will hold a public hearing Thursday morning.

If passed into law, Maine would join a growing number of states that require students to learn cursive. Currently, 24 states require some level of instruction. A decade ago, only 14 did. California and New Hampshire both enacted requirements within the past two years.

A similar proposal to require cursive was considered by Maine lawmakers in 2019, but was ultimately rejected by the education committee.

The idea for the new bill originally came from a constituent, but Underwood said he got “fired up” about it the more he thought about the benefits of learning cursive, including helping students better retain the information they are writing down. It also helps with brain function, hand-eye coordination and the ability to read historical documents, he said.

Underwood remembers the satisfaction that came from learning a new task, even if it wasn’t easy.

“It was difficult, but I’m very glad to have accomplished it because it improved my hand-eye coordination and dexterity,” he said.

Maine generally leaves decisions about what it is taught in school to local officials.

“Local school boards and educators are entrusted with making the best decisions for their students, which includes determining curricula,” said Chloe Teboe, spokesperson for the Maine Department of Education, which will not offer testimony on the bill.

A QUESTION OF TIME

In schools that still teach cursive, lessons are usually introduced at the end of second grade or beginning of third. But the cursive students learn now is a more modern style than the script used on the U.S. Constitution and other historical documents.

Bookkeeper Platt Rogers Spencer created a fancy form of cursive with whorls and flourishes that was widely taught in schools starting in 1850, according to the National Museum of American History. That style gave way in the early 1900s to the Palmer method, a rounder, simpler and faster style standardized for instruction by Austin Norman Palmer. It was the most commonly taught method for decades.

The simpler D’Nealian script was introduced in the 1970s. Today, the cursive style used by “Handwriting Without Tears” — a popular handwriting curriculum taught in schools — is even simpler, with a distinct upright look compared to the older, slanted styles.

In southern Maine, very few districts still teach cursive to every student. In some districts, including Old Orchard Beach, it is offered as an enrichment activity for interested students.

“It wouldn’t do any harm to teach cursive, but if you measure that versus the ability to be a very efficient and skilled person with a keyboard, I would think in this day and age it’s more important to be a skilled and efficient person on a keyboard,” said John Suttie, the superintendent in Old Orchard Beach.

In Biddeford, Saco and Dayton schools, cursive is typically offered only as a specialty lesson by a few elementary school teachers.

“Aside from its depreciation as the currency of the modern written language, our educators have so many standards, Maine Learning Results obligations, and other curricular outcomes to which their instruction is tied that I’m just not sure where we’d find the time in the day,” said Chris Indorf, assistant superintendent for those towns.

A LOST ART

The cursive tradition in holding on in other school districts, where educators say there is value in dedicating time to regular lessons. They see the form as something of a lost art.

The neat cursive writing of students is a point of pride at Woodland Consolidated School in Aroostook County. The school, with fewer than 200 students, is home to multiple winners of the Zaner-Bloser National Handwriting Contest.

Sandy Swan, who has been teaching there for years, said writing in cursive engages a different part of the brain and increases attention span, especially important at a time when kids spend hours scrolling on phones or playing video games. Students who learn cursive print much more neatly and get excited when they can read old documents, she said.

Swan loves the way cursive looks and doesn’t think it should go away.

“It’s so arty. It’s so beautiful, the swirl and twirls,” she said.

Maine’s Catholic schools never stopped teaching cursive, even as they embrace modern technology.

Sandy Wheeler, the superintendent of the two high schools and nine elementary-middle schools in the Diocese of Portland, said Catholic elementary schools have a strong focus on traditional learning styles like memorization, phonics and spelling. She also sees it as character building.

“Cursive requires focus and discipline and learning patience,” she said.

At St. Brigid — where the school logo is written in cursive — third graders are always excited to learn cursive, said teacher Cindy Halpin, who has been teaching it for 36 years. She plays soft instrumental music during the daily cursive lesson, turning it into a relaxing time for students after their morning recess.

As students practiced their Cs on Wednesday morning, Halpin walked around the classroom, stopping occasionally to guide students’ pencils to make the proper shape.

Camille, who was happy to be learning her name letter, said she found lowercase Z tricky because “they don’t look anything like a Z” and loves making the bumps of an M. She thinks all kids should learn how to write in cursive.

“It’s just really fun because it looks better than print,” she said. “Printing is all straight lines. Cursive is all ups and downs.”

After copying the sentence “All Catholics are Christians, but not all Christians are Catholics,” 9-year-old Jack Hunter said he likes learning how to write letters in cursive, especially lowercase H and B.

“They’re the most fun and I like the way they look,” he said. “It’s soothing to make the letters.”

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