Ohio Gov. Signs Bill to Make Elementary School Even Worse

Wanna feel old? Members of Ohio’s incoming fifth grader class were born years after Twitter was founded and were mere toddlers when Instagram and Snapchat went mainstream. But sure, it makes perfect sense to make them learn to write in cursive by the time they reach middle school.

On Wednesday, Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed into law the “Require Instruction in Cursive Handwriting” bill, according to Columbus station Fox 13. The law now requires the Ohio Department of Education to “include supplemental instruction materials in cursive handwriting in the English language arts model curriculum” for grades kindergarten through fifth.

Specifically, the law now requires students know how to legibly write by third grade (an important benchmark, for sure) but also know how to “create readable documents using legible cursive handwriting by the end of fifth grade.”

Such “instructional materials” for cursive are to be made available by July 1, the news station reported. So, given the timeline of these benchmarks, kids who were born sometime between 2008 and 2009, who grew up playing games on their parents’ bumper-padded touch screens and learned how to text years before we did will be required to write as many cursive documents as their teachers desire.

The sponsors behind this bill-turned-law, Reps. Marilyn Slaby and Andrew Brenner, said cursive can be “extremely helpful in supporting focus, learning patterns, memory, and spelling,” and studies show “the brain learns better when there is constant movement from the hand, rather than the hand having to be lifted after every pen stroke,” according to WFMJ.

So have fun learning that cursive, elementary schoolers of Ohio. It’ll certainly come in handy when you’re applying for a bank account, or writing someone’s name on a Starbucks cup, or something.