ASU professor weighs in on handwriting instruction

A recent Washington Post article titled "Cursive handwriting disappearing from public schools" took a look at the elementary education requirements across the nation for cursive writing, and ASU professor Steve Graham offered his expert opinion on the subject. 

"The truth is that cursive writing is pretty much gone, except in the adult world for people in their 60s and 70s," says Graham in the April 4 article. Graham, Warner Professor in the Division of Leadership and Innovation in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, is renowned as "one of the top U.S. experts in handwriting instruction," according to the Post.

"[Graham] said that for classroom educators, the cost for teaching cursive is precious time," write T. Rees Shapiro and Sarah L. Voisin, authors of the Washington Post piece. "The argument for keeping cursive around centers more on tradition than practicality."