Gen Alpha could bring handwriting back

Cursive handwriting is making a big comeback in schools for students of the Gen Alpha generation (born between 2010 and 2025).

New Jersey and Pennsylvania are the most recent in a growing number of states to bring old-fashioned penmanship back into the classroom, with governors in both states enacting legislation this year requiring schools to teach it.

New Jersey had stopped requiring it in 2010—but new legislation now mandates schools there to teach cursive to kids ages 8 to 11, in third to fifth grades. The Garden State follows about two dozen states in mandating that cursive handwriting be taught. Those states include California, which signed a law in 2024 requiring first through sixth graders to learn to write in cursive as part of the public school curriculum.

Now, over half the states in the U.S. either require or strongly encourage schools to teach students to read and write in cursive, per Education Week. That’s a reversal of the trend of the last decade or so, in which the rise of computers emphasized typing—which made handwriting somewhat of a lost art for many young students, as Common Core standards focused on math, English proficiency, and keyboard skills.

Handwriting activates the brain differently than typing

One benefit of cursive writing is the effect it has on the brain. A recent study in the journal Nature found that handwriting and typing activate brain regions associated with motor control, sensory perception, and higher-order cognitive functions differently.

“Handwriting activates a broader network of brain regions involved in motor, sensory, and cognitive processing,” the study reports. “Typing engages fewer neural circuits, resulting in more passive cognitive engagement.”

It goes on to conclude that “despite the advantages of typing in terms of speed and convenience, handwriting remains an important tool for learning and memory retention, particularly in educational contexts.”

In short, handwriting activates memory and language centers in the brain that are needed for neural development, according to the University of California, Riverside.

Handwriting could help stave off Alzheimer’s and dementia

Additional research shows handwriting may help stave off Alzheimer’s disease.

According to research from Rush University Medical Center that was published in the medical journal Neurology, handwriting (not typing), along with reading and playing games, can delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease by up to five years.

Researchers followed 1,903 participants with an average age of 80, who were asked about activities such as visiting a library, writing letters, doing puzzles, and playing checkers or board games.

“Our study shows that people who engage in more cognitively stimulating activities may be delaying the age at which they develop dementia,” study author Robert S. Wilson said. “Our research suggests that the link between cognitive activity and the age at which a person develops dementia is mainly driven by the activities you do later in life.”

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