Campaign for Cursive (C4C) is using Jan. 23, John Hancock’s birthday, also National Handwriting Day, as the day to highlight its goal of increasing awareness for the need of teaching cursive handwriting in school through an annual cursive contest.

With the adoption of the Common Core Standards in most states, cursive handwriting instruction has been on the decline as the standards do not make such instruction mandatory.

This has concerned some, like those behind C4C, that cursive instruction will soon become obsolete, and are working overtime to help bring it back.

Started in 2012, C4C has made it their goal to showcase the importance of maintaining cursive instruction for children.

"Handwriting is a life-long skill that should be available, taught, and practiced as part of a basic education for all children, regardless of whether they receive their education through public, private or home-schooling. We want to connect with legislators, corporations, associations, parents, educators, grandparents and all who believe our kids deserve to know how to read and write cursive,” says C4C’s website.

On Jan 23, C4C will begin its annual handwriting contest called Cursive is Cool, where children in grades 1-6 are encouraged to provide answers to the following questions in their best cursive handwriting:

• Why is cursive cool?
• What do you think is fun to do that involves cursive writing?
• Why do you like to sign your name?

Graded by judges from the American Handwriting Analysis Foundation, children have until March 18 to enter.

The campaign is also utilizing social media to give cursive a modern update.

"A Social Media Challenge created by member Val Weil asks participants to write a short note and sign it, take a selfie with the note, and post it to share cursive writing across the world. Anyone can post to the Campaign for Cursive pages on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram,” said C4C in a statement.

Originally starting off as just contest for U.S. children, after expressed interest the contest has reached a global scale; it now includes a seperate contest for members in Canada and will soon do so for members in India as well. 

Read more about C4C and its annual cursive contest here.

Article by Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor

1/25/2016