Fewer Arizona schools teaching cursive

PHOENIX — More schools are dropping cursive lessons because more states no longer require them.

Arizona State University teaching professor Steve Graham sayid there are no definitive studies that prove cursive makes students smarter so it makes sense for schools to choose either print or cursive.

“We already have a crowded curriculum and one thing that’s easy to let go is something that duplicates another skill. We don’t really need to teach both.”

But at Gethsemane Lutheran School in Tempe, students start learning the script in first grade and when they reach Karen Einspeahr’s fifth grade classroom, “it’s just part of every subject.”

Einspeahr said her students who write cursive actually type more fluently and quickly than if they were only using print handwriting.

Arizona does not require public schools to teach cursive, but schools and districts can choose to do so.