Introduction
For decades, people have written in cursive for many things, whether it’s for writing in a birthday card or signing your signature. But as of 2026, many people use what is known as “Print handwriting” instead of cursive. What happened exactly and why did cursive stop becoming less relevant, only to be replaced by print handwriting?
Rise of Technology
The effect of technology and the rise of it in schools is one of the main reasons why cursive is becoming less relevant. Now that most of students’ assignments are online and not really on paper anymore (besides for math), students write on paper less than they did before technology became more used in schools. This leads to teachers not bothering to teach cursive handwriting since most students can type writing assignments instead of writing them on paper. Since students write less on paper, many schools have removed teaching cursive from their curriculum because schools are prioritizing typing an essay instead of writing it with a pencil and paper.
Common Core State Standards (CCSS)
A new learning system called The Common Core Standards came out in 2010. This new way of teaching was created to keep up with the rising technology in classrooms because during this time, new technology like computers and interactive whiteboards (like SMART boards) were being added and utilized in more classrooms. This led to more and more schools adapting to using more technology in the classroom. Because of this, the CCSS decided to remove teaching cursive to students to focus more on learning keyboarding and typing instead of learning cursive.
Not enough time left in the school year
Another reason why many schools stopped teaching cursive was because there was only such limited time left in the school year. Teachers had to finish teaching all of their planned lessons throughout the year and then move on to preparing for final exams and standardized testing so that students can get better grades on these big tests. Cursive can take up to 100 hours to master and teachers didn’t have enough time to help students practice. This led to time spent learning and focusing on core subjects like reading and math to decline, since there was such limited time left within that school year.
The effects of not learning cursive
Knowing cursive is an important skill to have, especially if you’re a student. Not being able to read cursive can negatively impact your ability to read historical letters or documents, which is bad especially if you’re taking a history class in school. Not knowing how to read cursive can also affect your ability to read someone’s signature, or you might not even know how to write your own, which isn’t a good thing because as you get older you will need to know how to sign your name on certain legal documents e.g when you buy a house.
What the future of cursive handwriting will look like
Not knowing how to write in cursive will lead to future generations only knowing how to write in print handwriting since they were never taught cursive in school. 40% of Gen Z doesn’t know how to write in cursive, which is a really big number and it indicates that many people in the future will no longer use cursive. I predict that cursive will become extinct in the future and will become forgotten, and I’m probably right because of the rise of technology, cursive is no longer being taught in schools, and more and more people use print handwriting over cursive.
