Just a few short years ago, cursive was something all kids were taught in schools. Not anymore! In many parts of the country, cursive is becoming a dead relic of the past. But Laci shows us why educators might be smart to keep teaching kids those loopy letters.

Read More:
The role of sensorimotor learning in the perception of letterlike forms: tracking the causes of neural specialization for letters.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18...
"Functional specialization in the brain is considered a hallmark of efficient processing. It is therefore not surprising that there are brain areas specialized for processing letters."

Cursive giving way to other pursuits as educators debate its value
http://tdn.com/news/local/cursivegiv...
"Researchers into handwriting counter with evidence that penmanship is a foundational skill in student success, pointing to studies that show cursive writing stimulates areas of the brain unaffected by keyboarding and helps children develop skills in reading, spelling, composition, memory and critical thinking."

The Great Handwriting Debate
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robfur...
"There has been a great deal of discussion around the topic of teaching cursive handwriting in the 21st century. Research on the debate is riddled with reasons both for and against including handwriting in the curriculum. "

What Learning Cursive Does for Your Brain
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/m...
"Ever try to read your physician's prescriptions? Children increasingly print their writing because they don't know cursive or theirs is unreadable."

Cursive Benefits Go Beyond Writing
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/...
"Putting pen to paper stimulates the brain like nothing else, even in this age of emails, texts and tweets. In fact, learning to write in cursive is shown to improve brain development in the areas of thinking, language and working memory."

Why You Learn More Effectively by Writing Than Typing
http://lifehacker.com/5738093/whyyou...
"The act of writing helps you clarify your thoughts, remember things better, and reach your goals more surely. Here's a look at the science and psychology behind writing, and why the pen may be mightier than the keyboard."

For Kids, Pen's Mightier Than Keyboard
http://www.futurity.org/societycultu...
"Children with and without handwriting disabilities were able to write more—and more quickly—when using a pen rather than a keyboard to compose essays, according to new research."

How Handwriting Trains the Brain
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001...
"Using advanced tools such as magnetic resonance imaging, researchers are finding that writing by hand is more than just a way to communicate."

The Effects of Handwriting Experience on Functional Brain Development in PreLiterate Children
http://www.iub.edu/~canlab/Publicatio...
"In an age of increasing technology, the possibility that typing on a keyboard will replace handwriting raises questions about the future usefulness of handwriting skills. Here we present evidence that brain activation during letter perception is inuenced in different, important ways by previous handwriting of letters versus previous typing or tracing of those same letters."

Watch More:
15Thousand Year Old Words
http://testtube.com/dnews/dnews3111...
How Music Affects Your Brain
http://testtube.com/dnews/dnews173h...
Pick Your Poison: Death By Ricin
http://testtube.com/pickyourpoison/ricin
____________________

DNews is dedicated to satisfying your curiosity and to bringing you mindbending stories & perspectives you won't find anywhere else! New videos twice daily.

Watch More DNews on TestTube http://testtube.com/dnews

Subscribe now! http://www.youtube.com/subscription_c...

DNews on Twitter   / dnews  

Anthony Carboni on Twitter   / acarboni  

Laci Green on Twitter   / gogreen18  

Trace Dominguez on Twitter   / trace501  

DNews on Facebook   / dnews  

DNews on Google+ http://gplus.to/dnews

Discovery News http://discoverynews.com