For six straight years, Rep. Gretchen Bangert, D-Florissant, has filed a bill that would require cursive handwriting to be taught in Missouri public schools.

The bill has failed each time, never making it out of the House and only twice getting initial approval. Yet Bangert isn’t letting the issue go.

In December, she pre-filed the bill for the seventh time, her final attempt before she leaves the House due to term limits, and earlier this month testified in a public hearing before the House Special Committee on Education Reform in a final bid to convince lawmakers to support the measure.

“Learning cursive is important because our primary source documents, many historical documents, notes and letters were written in cursive, including our Constitution,” Bangert told the committee.

Bangert’s one-page proposal would make it a requirement for public school districts and charter schools in Missouri to teach cursive writing by the end of fifth grade and ensure students pass a test demonstrating competency in both reading and writing cursive.

Teaching cursive in Missouri isn’t required by law. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education sets instructional guidelines for local districts, known as the Missouri Learning Standards, but schools have ultimate control over curriculum and which material is being taught.
Twenty-three states instruct schools to teach cursive. The Missouri Learning Standards, approved in 2016 by the State Board of Education, highlight the ability to write legibly in cursive as a goal for second and third graders. However, this is merely an expectation, not a requirement.
But Bangert wants to make it a requirement.

A few years ago, Bangert said she gave an intern a handwritten note with a task she wanted him to complete. When she returned two weeks later to check if he completed it, the intern said he didn’t do it because he couldn’t read the note.

Kari Yeagy, director of communications for Hallsville School District, where cursive is being taught in third-grade classrooms, believes teaching cursive to students is important.

Before serving in her current role, Yeagy taught second and third grade at Hallsville schools for seven years. She said she packs her daughter’s lunch each school day and puts a note written in cursive in her lunchbox.

Springfield Public Schools, the state’s largest school district with more than 24,000 students, teaches cursive to elementary students. In an email, Teresa Bledsoe, the district’s director of communications, said cursive is being taught in the second, third, fourth and fifth grades.

During the public hearing, no one testified in opposition to Bangert’s bill. No one testified in opposition last year either. But arguments against teaching cursive do exist.

Rep. Doug Mann, D-Columbia, supports Bangert’s bill, but said he is sympathetic to the fact that classrooms are constrained by limited instruction time, which may become hampered by teaching cursive.
Teaching cursive used to be a frequent part of public education — before it was pushed aside when the Common Core State Standards were rolled out and adopted by nearly all 50 states and the District of Columbia. But as the number of adopting states grew, focus shifted from cursive to keyboarding.