The Georgia Department of Education has made a major change to its English Language Arts requirements for young students—learning cursive handwriting.
The reintroduction of cursive in grades 3-5 will begin with the 2025-26 school year that begins in August, two years after the state board revised the standards.
In an era of digital media with students learning writing via computer keyboards and with content creation increasingly coming from artificial intelligence, old-school pencil-on-paper communication is making something of a comeback.
Georgia is one of several states mandating cursive instruction, but that’s still only half of the states. Many states dropped cursive following the adoption of Common Core standards in 2010 and haven’t resumed the practice.
But with literacy rates plummeting in recent years—only 31 percent of fourth-graders were considered proficient readers in a 2024 assessment—some educational institutions and agencies have been re-evaluating the value of handwriting.
The Georgia DOE calls handwriting “a basic tool for life, assists with the development of both fine motor skills and working memory skills; automatic handwriting skills facilitate active learning and efficient communications.”
The elements of a strong literacy foundation, according to the department, consist of phonological awareness, concepts of print, phonics, fluency and handwriting.
According to the new standards, the basics of cursive will be taught in third grade, and in fourth and fifth grades, “students continue cursive handwriting practice to build fluency and automaticity in handwriting to communicate effectively.”
The new standards (you can read them here) also show graphics of ideal handwriting forms that will be part of the instructional process, and offer recommendations on body posture, paper position, how to hold pencils and pens and support for left-handed writers.
The Georgia DOE guidelines, which include links to teaching resources, also include a quote from Dr. Rosemary Sassoon, a British educator and handwriting expert: “Handwriting is the imprint of the self on the page.”
The Cobb County School District also has a resource page with links to English Language Arts instruction at all grade levels.
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