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Do you think Michigan schools should be required to teach cursive?

Posted at 8:37 AM, Oct 25, 2019
and last updated 2019-10-25 12:26:16-04

(WXYZ) — More states are pushing to bring cursive back to schools, but Michigan doesn't appear to be one of them.

Heading inside a third grade classroom at Parkview Elementary and you're quick to spot it. Students' hands flying over paper, cursive coming out the other end. In this school, it's practiced, but not everywhere – some are calling it a lost art.

The Legislature even took up a bill to mandate its teaching in Michigan. It failed, and some schools no longer teach it.

Meanwhile, Texas is bringing it back this year. In fact, 12 states, including Ohio, now teach it.

But with so much push to a digital age, computers in the workplace and computers in our hands, teachers now need to prepare students for "a new world."

"We want our students to be digital citizens and ready to type and enter a technological world," said Parkview principal Laura Carino. "We also want them not to lose that fine art."

District-wide, not all schools have that same push. Carino says it's due to more and more "must teach" lessons in the classroom.

"We expect a lot from our teachers – we have so many standards we have to instruct throughout the course of the year, in each grade level, starting in kindergarten," Carino said. "It's finding that balance of fitting in the handwriting when we can, while also making sure we are hitting home on reading, math, social studies and science.