Does your kid know cursive? It's coming back as a requirement to CA schools

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

21. It's good for way more than that.

The evidence has been building in recent years to indicate that cursive writing actually helps improve both retention *and* comprehension of information for students, particularly when taking class notes. Think of it this way:

You see or hear information--that's your first imprint. Then you write it down--the physical act sends a signal associated with the information to the brain, for a "secondary" imprint. Then you see what you've written for yet another imprint.

Cursive is also faster to write than printing, plus the letters in words are linked together. As in linking them in your mental imprint of it. Print doesn't do that so well. Those are the big factors in the "retention" aspect.

The comprehension comes from what most people taking longhand notes have to do: Condense the information into a form that makes sense to them. Nobody takes cursive notes verbatim. They record the "important" parts, the gist of the data, and convert it into terminology that makes sense *to them.* Furthermore, taking notes this way means the mind isn't cluttered with the excess verbiage--the note-taker gets to the meat of the information, which better improves understanding of the material when studying from notes later.

I know that when I was studying foreign language at uni, taking notes by hand made remembering vocabulary, conjugations, grammar rules and so on "stick" better in my head. I was able to understand more when I wrote things out during class, and I could "convert" the information faster when speaking the language.