Teaching cursive will again be a requirement for Texas schools.
According toKXAN, the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) is going through some changes in the language arts requirements. The changes, which were agreed on in 2017, will be implemented next fall.
There is an on-going debate on whether or not cursive is a valuable enough skill to be required in elementary education.
Valrie Hotchkiss, a library director at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign thinks it is necessary for understanding historical documents.
“(Without knowing cursive, students) will be locked out of doing research with literary papers and archival collections, they will not even be able to read their grandmother’s diary or their parents’ love letters.”
Some people think differently, saying time should be spent teaching typing in our increasingly digital world.
Anne Trubeck, author of “A Skeptic’s Guide to Writers’ Houses writes, “Touch typing is an example of cognitive automaticity, the ability to do things without conscious attention or awareness. Automaticity takes a burden off our working memory, allowing us more space for higher-order thinking.”
Under the new rules, children will begin learning cursive in 2nd grade and writing legibly in cursive will be required by 5th grade.
