Bill would encourage Michigan schools to teach cursive handwriting again [View all]

(Detroit Free Press) If you can write comfortably in cursive, you have a leg up on this Free Press reporter and likely many students who have been through public schooling in Michigan in recent years — but lawmakers want to give schools a chance to reverse that trend.

House Bill 4064 would recommend the Michigan Department of Education develop a cursive handwriting instruction plan for public schools in Michigan. The department would also be directed to make the plan available to public schools for the start of the 2024-25 school year.

The bill does not mandate the department to create a plan, but it would be “strongly encouraged” to do so. A legislative analysis of the bill conducted by the House Fiscal Agency found the MDE already has a cursive instruction model program it can implement. School districts would then also be strongly encouraged — but again, not mandated — to adopt the cursive instruction plan. Twenty-one states currently require some form of cursive instruction in public schools, according to the National Education Association.

Michigan’s most recent standards, that were adopted in 2010, don’t require cursive instruction.

While cursive instruction isn’t mandated in Michigan’s public schools, it remains a requirement in many Catholic schools — The Archdiocese of Detroit, Diocese of Grand Rapids and Diocese of Lansing all contain cursive instruction as a curriculum standard for their elementary students. ...............(more)

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2023/03/27/cursive-handwriting-michigan-public-schools/70045137007/