Forty-five out of fifty states have adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), a set of state-led educational standards. Texas, one of the five who has yet to adopt the Standards, has found one major flaw in them – they do not include cursive writing instruction as part of elementary school curriculum.
Is this really a problem? After all, cursive handwriting seems to be outdated and uncommon in today’s society. But school districts in Texas believe that cursive writing is important because of the benefit it has to students with dyslexia.
A dyslexic student may find printing to be challenging because of how many similar letters there are (b and d, or i and j). Many, however, find cursive writing to be much easier and also much more encouraging. Cursive writing may boost a dyslexic student’s confidence because not only might he be able to write it more legibly than printing, but he may also feel more adult by learning to write the way his parents did.
Some Texas schools have dyslexic students work for forty-five minutes, four times a week on overcoming their dyslexia, and one of the main resources they teach younger students is cursive writing.