Can Gen Z Really Not Read Cursive?

Cursive handwriting is the latest hot-button issue in online discourse, with users debating why Gen Z was not educated in the classic form of penmanship. There’s anxiety about what its disappearance could mean for history and academia as a whole.

At the center of the debate is “Gen Z Never Learned to Read Cursive,” a piece The Atlantic published in 2022 highlighting how an increasing number of students—including those at the collegiate level—can’t read or understand the writing style.

Its author, former Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust, notes that several students went as far as avoiding writing assignments that involved reading cursive texts, noting a particular example of a student who deferred writing about Virginia Woolf because it would have required reading her handwritten letters. Moreover, her students describe their signatures as “creative squiggles,” drawing from the fragments of cursive they had engaged with.

Incredible. Why did we stop teaching cursive? What Northeastern elite thought that was a good idea that then become normed in the US? Thankfully it’s coming back but we set back an entire generation. Cursive helps the brain develop complex neural pathways. GenZ missed this! 🤦🏽‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/8CxIUs5BR0
— Anthony Bradley (@drantbradley) December 29, 2025

“My niche conspiracy theory is that they stopped teaching cursive so that we can't read historical texts,” X user Blaire White said of the plunge in cursive comprehension.

The answer can be more specifically tied to an Obama-era government initiative. The Common Core State Standards Initiative was launched in 2010 with the aim of consistency in learning programs and practices for primary and secondary education across the country. The initiative did not include cursive writing as a curriculum requirement, resulting in 41 states dropping cursive lessons by 2011. A report from 2024 notes that many have since reversed their decision, with the number of states where cursive teaching is mandatory currently sitting at 25.

In a 2016 interview with PBS, Sue Pimentel, lead writer for the English Language Arts and Literacy Standards for the Common Core State Standards Initiative, pointed to shifting means of communication for cursive’s academic demise.

“We thought that more and more of student communications and adult communications are via technology. And knowing how to use technology to communicate and to write was most critical for students.”

Pimental also noted the time constraints around teaching cursive.

“One of the things we heard from teachers around the country—in some cases, obviously not all—was that sometimes cursive writing takes an enormous amount of instructional time…You could be spending time on other things rather than students practicing cursive writing. It's really a matter of emphasis."

The question really becomes one of accuracy versus intricacy, and whether history will be lost on those who (literally) cannot understand it.

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