"There's research shows us that a child will have a better concept and better memory for what a letter is and what it represents if they actually handwrite it ... [but] the argument is really against those pages of cursive, joined-up writing exercises which, in the end actually don't change many people's hand writing styles... Cursive writing is cute, and nice, and decorative if you've got a leaning towards wanting to do it ... just like you might like to learn to crochet or knit.
"The handwriting exercises that we do are really based on very old technology," she said."So when we teach kids particular downstrokes and where to start their letters, it's really based on how you had to use the technology of a fountain pen and ink."Cursive writing is a funny thing; it's not quite practical (who writes an essay under exam conditions cursively, and who finds that more legible than neatly separated printed script?), and it's not quite decorative (it stops well short of anything that could even generously be called “calligraphy”). Its sole raison d'etre is tradition (that teaching children fountain-pen-era techniques is in some ways useful), if not an authoritarian, vaguely punitive disciplinary mindset (idle hands are the devil's plaything, and those little hell-apes that we call children must have their rebellious spirits broken with laborious exercises lest they get up to mischief). Perhaps killing it off as a mandatory part of the curriculum could be the best thing for it: once it's no longer compulsory, and is as alien to the average person as film photography or slide rules, some subset of artisanal crafters and/or hipster contrarians will take it upon themselves to revive this vintage skill and take it further than it would have otherwise gone?
The article, on ABC News, speculates on the possibility of Australia following the Finnish lead and removing cursive writing from its schools. I expect that will happen somewhere around the time of them ditching King Charles III as their head of state and abolishing Imperial honours for the second time in history. I can imagine the ultra-conservative establishment running the country wouldn't have a bar of any such proposal, and indeed can almost read the column in The Australian denouncing the very idea as proof that the Marxists have taken over the teaching profession.