Handwriting skill may bring school success

MIAMI, Jan. 25 (UPI) -- Handwriting may be a tool for success and there may be academic value to good penmanship, a researcher in Florida says.

With the state considering dropping the teaching of cursive writing from the curriculum, a Florida International University professor decided to find out if there was value in good handwriting.

Laura Dinehart, a professor in FIU's College of Education, studied the handwriting skill levels of 1,000 second-grade students and found students with good penmanship tended to get better grades.

Those with higher handwriting scores averaged a B in school while those with lower scores averaged a C, she found.

"We think it has something to do with kids' ability to pay attention, to focus and hold things in their working memory," Dinehart told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

She said she hopes to work with struggling pre-K students in further research to see if writing intervention can lead to improved results in reading and math.

"People should take a second look at how important handwriting might actually be," Dinehart said.