INDIANAPOLIS—A bill on cursive writing in Indiana schools garnered unanimous support in the House Chamber on Tuesday. The passage of this bill comes after changes from representatives and senators of both parties in conference committee meetings.
If made into law, Senate Bill 72 will require each Indiana school to provide data to the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) on if its students are learning cursive. If they are, the school would also have to include which grade levels are doing so.
Students learned cursive in Indiana schools until 2011, when IDOE removed the requirement. If schools still wanted to provide lessons on it, they could, but many educators at the time wrote letters to the state requesting to replace cursive writing classes with typing classes.
The push for expanding cursive writing has popped up in the Indiana House and Senate many times over the past decade, with Rep. Sheila Klinker, D-Lafayette, and Sen. Jean Leising, R-Oldenburg, championing multiple bills calling for cursive to be required again.
In fact, SB 72 started out as a requirement bill, but after amendments, it became just a way for the state to know how many Hoosier children are actually learning cursive.
Rep. Robert Behning, R-Indianapolis, said the conferees’ work simply brought the bill back to its version prior to the House’s amendments.
Klinker, an avid supporter of cursive writing, was rather smiley while sharing her opinions on the bill.
“I cannot tell you how important it is to bring back cursive writing in schools,” Klinker said.
She said cursive is needed so that kids can understand all types of writing—or even be able to read “grandma’s handwriting.”
Rep. Vernon Smith, D-Gary, said he believes not having all students learn cursive creates two distinct levels of intelligence, separating students from each other.
“What we have done over the years when this body made a decision to eliminate cursive writing from the curriculum of our schools . . . was create two classes of students, two classes of citizens that have different abilities, in order to be able to communicate in the written format,” Smith said.
The House unanimously passed the bill by concurrence. Later on in another meeting, the Senate also passed the bill by concurrence, and it will now head to Gov. Eric Holcomb's desk to await a signature.
During this meeting, representatives also passed a bill to require Indiana schools to teach students about financial literacy, including things like money management and how to handle a credit score.