"Scripting" a writing revival: "cursive handwriting is the creative canary in the coal mine--and it slowly is dying.".

• Author: Papritz, Carew
• Position: Education

I RECENTLY was helping a little girl in an after-school class who was trying to write her name in cursive--or script for you Baby Boomers--for the first time. She struggled to get the letters to connect perfectly and slant just right. Over and over she rewrote her name so that the spacing and the height were all "perfect." When she was done, she turned to me and said with a world of newfound pride in her voice, "Now, I am an adult."

I had forgotten all about that amazing rite of passage and how much it meant to me as a child. Even as a burgeoning writer at the age of 10, I wanted to write my name with all the character, flair, and confidence of the amazing artists and writers who came before me--and those writers were not just novelists; they also were idea makers, the ones whose "John Hancocks" we see at the bottom of our Constitution. Can you imagine this powerful document with signatures printed as if done by kindergartners? Kids print; adults write.

So, why is handwriting still so important, especially for our children? We are tactile creatures first. We are not cyborgs--well, not yet, at least. Kids still learn best by physically moving, talking, playing, and doing, which is why you give your kids Play-Doh first, not a cell phone. Give them crayons, not screens. As for handwriting, do you know it actually is easier for children to learn cursive first than print? Ask any mom out there if it is easier for their offspring to draw circles or draw lines? Circles are easy; straight lines--not so.

Do you know why reading comprehension is falling off the educational cliff?--because our kids are learning to write first by the "click or tap." However, when they tap an "A" on a keyboard, they might as well be tapping a "Z" as far as their brains are concerned. When children physically write the letter "A" for the first time, they send an electrical signal to their brain that imprints that "A" on their neurons. When they read an "A" on a page, they access the "A" they already know in their brains, but if they tap or click an "A" on a keyboard or a tablet, they get the same effect as if they type a "K" or a "Z." There is no physical relationship to the letter. It is all the same "tap or click" to the brain. Because kids are not using their hands to write, they are not training their brains to "see" the letter. Thus, the ability to connect written letters to the written page becomes more and more problematic at a younger and younger age.

When...