A student is called to speak with the teacher during class on a Wednesday morning about a recent homework assignment. He is relieved to hear that his teacher only needed to know what answer was written on his homework after being unable to read his handwriting, and he is not in trouble. He is one of the many students in schools all over America to struggle with handwriting.

Only a few years ago, cursive was an integral part of a student’s education, considering it is the basic graduation of handwriting from simplistic printing to more dignified handwriting. Today, however, with technology becoming more involved in learning, handwriting in general seems to be becoming less and less important, especially cursive. Many students and other schools may have only had a brief lesson on cursive in elementary school. However, cursive is still necessary in today’s society. There are many scenarios in life when it may benefit people to know how to write in cursive. For example, even though many documents today are not written in cursive, many older documents may be, and people who know how to read and write in cursive have the advantage of being able to understand them.

As previously mentioned, my middle school is one of many schools to neglect the importance of cursive handwriting. Schools seem to be underestimating students’ interest in cursive as well, as one such student stated that, “Cursive is cool.”, and, when asked the question of whether or not cursive is important in the real world, responded, “Yes, because if you want to write nicely on a document, you don’t want to use regular handwriting. That would be unsophisticated.” At the very least, students such as this one, who are interested in cursive, should at least have the option of learning cursive.