Indiana Senator Jean Leising started a fight to put cursive writing back in schools nearly 13 years ago and despite repeated disappointment she’s refused to give up.
Every year for more than a decade, Leising, R-Oldenburg, said she’s introduced a bill seeking a mandate for cursive instruction. And every year it has failed. Many years the bill has not even made out it of committee.
This year could be different. Leising, who has been a lawmaker off and on since 1988, filed Senate Bill 103, which would require schools to teach cursive and print handwriting in addition to spelling instruction. That bill died last week.
How’s your cursive?We dusted off ours. Here’s how one sentence looked
On Wednesday Leising successfully added an amendment to a bill on internet safety in schools that would mandate cursive for elementary schools. That bill passed the Senate’s education committee and now heads to the Senate floor.
During the 2023 legislative session, Leising’s original bill was amended to require schools to report whether or not they teach cursive. Those survey results were published last December in a report by Indiana’s Department of Education although more than 380 school districts did not respond.