Nearly 40 years later, the admonishments of my second-grade teacher at Thomas Jefferson Elementary in Anaheim still ring in my ears. “Messy! Messy!” I was a precocious 8-year-old, placed in a ...

Tyara Brooks teaches her fourth-grade students how to write in cursive at Longfellow Elementary School in Pasadena. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) “Messy! Messy!” Nearly 40 years later, the ...

Is learning cursive writing essential for developing young minds, or is it an outdated skill being championed by nostalgic policymakers? The question sparked a lively and personal debate on a recent ...

BALTIMORE - If you're of a certain age, you probably remember learning cursive in elementary school. While penmanship has largely been erased from most curriculums, at some schools, it's still alive ...

The Times asked readers for samples of their cursive and to talk about their relationship with old-fashioned, longhand writing with its loops, curls and dips. A new law will require all California ...

Sitting in the newly renovated St. Anastasia School playground as a fifth grader four years ago doing her homework, Maritza Escamilla was approached by a student from nearby Glen Flora Elementary ...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The pen may not be as mighty as the keyboard these days, but California and a handful of states are not giving up on handwriting entirely. Bucking a growing trend of eliminating ...

Common Core standards do not call for cursive instruction as mandatory part of curriculum At least 41 states do not require public schools to teach cursive reading or writing The standards promote ...

Children have to learn how to write letters. The debate in schools over the past two decades has been whether they should they learn to write in cursive or print. Some say that with so many students ...

Many schools have eliminated cursive in elementary schools with the rise of computers But several states say cursive is still valuable for students Proponents says cursive helps coordination and motor ...

Now and then, my inbox overflows when one of these Play in Mind posts strikes a nerve. Some correspondents chime in. Some contest the ideas. And some take me way beyond. Such is the case with a recent ...