Our ongoing series A More Perfect Union aims to show that what unites us as Americans is far greater than what divides us. In this installment, we look at the power of the written word. Common Core ...

As a new school year begins, many children will be returning to classrooms filled with brand new computers, tablets and other tools essential to prep students for life in a plugged-in world. But as ...

In a busy sixth-grade classroom at Millennial Tech Middle School Wednesday, Thomas Courtney taught a language arts lesson. He also teaches history and now penmanship. “I took my cursive writing so ...

This is One Thing, a column with tips on how to live. Growing up in Saudi Arabia, I learned cursive with a fountain pen in the third grade as part of the standard curriculum. I wasn’t good at school, ...

Since the U.S. Department of Education dropped cursive writing from standard national curricula in 2011, the debate on the value of learning penmanship has raged. Some argue that the skill is obsolete ...

Two and a half years ago, I presented a carefully thought-out argument for not requiring schools to teach cursive, calling it the equivalent of teaching about slide rules. I expected praise for my ...

When Jack Lew was nominated to be Treasury secretary in 2013, President Barack Obama joked that as a condition of the appointment, Lew would have to learn to sign his name more legibly. The ...