An idea floating about our culture is that cursive handwriting is just one method of making marks on paper and that the method doesn’t matter. I think that is simplistic and erroneous.

Making marks on paper via a pencil creates neural pathways that help connect the task to the thought. The shaping of the letters helps children to connect phonics to the words being formed. The creation of capital letters and lower case letters helps to teach the proper capitalization because it requires thought and effort to create the different shapes and sizes. Add cursive to the mix and you have the opportunity to further these advantages.

Many educators claim that cursive handwriting is outdated in this digital age, but I wonder if the effort involved in teaching proper, legible, beautiful handwriting is the real issue, because that requires significant time and one-on-one interaction with the writer. After all, computer programs to teach keyboarding require very little teacher involvement—the programs are self-correcting and provide copious flashes of lights, cute sounds, and bright colors to keep children interested in the task. Educators also claim that cursive is low on their list of daily priorities and that there isn’t time during the day even if they were so inclined to teach it.

The final product of penmanship is a personal creation unlike anyone else’s, even when a group of children have all written the exact same words. On the other hand, a computer-generated and printed word document containing that same text will typically have the same appearance whether created by a child or an adult since readers have a narrow range of acceptable font styles and sizes for documents.

In addition to cognitive and artistic benefits to cursive handwriting, remember that in order to read cursive writing well, one needs to write it. Personal notes from friends and family, journals, letters, lists, recipes, nad other family and historical documents documents fill our lives. Our country’s founding documents were written in beautiful cursive for all to read, and American citizens should be able to read these for themselves rather than depend upon someone else’s transcription of them into print.

The debate on this won’t end any time soon. In the meanwhile, you can read other people’s opinions here at CBS News and the Washington Post.