We should not teach students how to write in cursive.

First of all, on the hand-cranked car argument, the official definition is "no longer valid or relevant" or "old-fashioned". Faced with (relatively) new technology such as typing, the so-called "art" of cursive does meet that definition quite nicely. There are very few situations in which you'd realistically use cursive (more on that later), just as there are very few situations in which you'd need to hand crank an old car to start it up. Thus, as far as I am concerned, cursive is exactly like hand-cranking a car " it has some possible benefits, but you'll never use it so it's not worth learning. For the sake of keeping things organized, I'd like to itemize and refute every argument you have presented: 1. You mentioned that those who write in cursive generated more words and ideas than those who write in print. This demonstrates correlation only, and correlation does NOT imply causation. There are a number of plausible explanations for this that do not involve cursive magically stimulating the brain, such as students who wrote in cursive coming from a better school system with more money to put into both their education and their cursive programs. I'd like to see some evidence of a direct causal relationship, and that means accounting for a lot of variables. I'd also like to see the actual mechanism by which cursive is supposed to cause this " it seems more related to the child's education (how they were taught to write, vocab lessons, etc) than it does with the way they write. 2. You claim that cursive is easier to learn than print. The article you cite [1] for this contradicts itself and isn't even entirely accurate. For one, it claims you need perfect lines and circles, which you don't, and that children need such features in order to write print. This is not true " nowhere are you required to write a "perfect" circle. Even If you are, it doesn't matter " children are free to generate their own varieties of print that suit them. The source you cited also goes on to say that handwriting has psychological link to the brain [2], but note that it said handwriting (which includes print and variants), not just cursive. Also, questionable non-academic source [1]. 3. You claim that cursive helps you read. One, this is entirely irrelevant " you'll spend more time reading far more clear printed words than you will curly words (there's a reason why standard fonts aren't handwriting-style fonts, you know). Worse, the source you cited [2] doesn't even back up its claim in any scientifically valid way " it even pulls the magical fact of "[print] letters may be all over the page, sometimes written from left to right and from right to left", which is blatantly false (and if you're talking about the orientation of letters, the same is true for cursive too!). Also, another questionable non-academic source " an article on a traditionalist homeschooling website written by a guy who thinks we should get rid of compulsory school attendance [3]? Give me a break! 4. You claim teaching cursive first improve literacy outcomes and increases the brain's ability to integrate visual and tactile information. Not only are there far better ways of doing this that will be more useful later in a child's life, but the source you cite [4] cites a dead link as its source for this information, which by extension renders you without a source for this information. 5. You claim cursive helps with treatment of dyslexia. Fine, teach dyslexics cursive. It shouldn't make a difference on anyone else who is not dyslexic " don't treat those who don't need treatment. 6. You claim cursive is correlated with higher SAT scores. As I mentioned before, correlation in no way implies causation. There could be a huge amount of factors behind that, making it just plain silly to suggest cursive is the true cause of the SAT scores. 7. You claim that cursive writing stimulates brain synapses and synchronicity between hemispheres in the brain. The source you cite does cite a source for that claim, but one I would classify as unreliable " Rand Nelson of Peterson Directed Handwriting, a for-profit company centered around teaching handwriting with an immense interest in promoting cursive [5]. This is not a valid source - it is non-academic in nature and might be biased. 8. You claim people are viewed as more intelligent if they can write cursive, and furthermore that it will help get you hired. This is a pet peeve of mine, because it's entirely irrelevant. Look at it this way " if you stop teaching cursive, people will stop viewing cursive as a sign of intelligence and will stop even considering it when looking to hire you for a job. Why? Because people don't know cursive, yet they are clearly intelligent people. It's essentially a feedback effect " the more you teach cursive, the more people expect it, and vice versa. It's a social norm, not a hard-coded fact of the universe, and social norms can be changed. Besides, at the end of the day, when a company is laying people off, do you honestly expect that they'll care if you know cursive? They'll care more about your real qualifications. Seriously, try asking your boss for a raise with the explanation of "I know cursive" - he might just laugh in your face. If you want to argue cursive in the workplace, don't argue how it makes you look, argue how it makes you more productive or more worthwhile to a company. Argue objective data, not subjective opinions. 9. You claim that if you teach print, a child will develop writing habits that become permanent. Your source [2] (that awful mostly-opinion-piece by the homeschooling guy) doesn't cite any evidence for this whatsoever; he literally just throws it out there and expects you to believe it. 10. You claim the cursive increases self esteem. The source you cite uses a personal, anecdotal example, which is in no way empirical evidence. Furthermore, the author claims that the reason for the self-esteem boost experienced was because of his feeling of accomplishment when he managed to write a perfect capital B [6]. You know what else gives you a feeling of accomplishment? Completing any other task that you put effort into. This self esteem boost is in no way specific to cursive " it's an incredibly broad thing that covers everything from getting a job to winning a level on a Mario game, which means you can't use self esteem for justifying usage of cursive. As given by the refutations above, you have so far failed to prove any real evidence showing cursive gives you any kind of gain of significance that some other skill/learning task could not give. You have cited extremely questionable sources that are at worst self-contradicting and sometimes just flat-out wrong. The best you have done so far is shown mere correlation, which is insufficient to prove any benefit. I'll be honest, I want to see some cold, hard data, not correlations. I want some data that strongly suggests without a doubt that cursive is beneficial, with experimental evidence to back it up (not just an opinion piece). I want numbers, brain scans, anything. Show me a child's brain doing more when writing in cursive verses print, except through the eyes of an fMRI (tool for seeing brain activity) or some similar device. I don't want opinions or statements, I want cold, hard data. As you have not shown any evidence that demonstrates a clear CAUSAL relationship between cursive and any noteworthy trait, I ask voters to keep in mind that Con, making the greater claim, has the burden of proof here. [1] http://www.abeka.com... [2] http://www.home-school.com... [3] http://www.home-school.com... [4] http://www.montessoriservices.com... [5] http://www.peterson-handwriting.com... [6] http://davidsortino.blogs.pressdemocrat.com...