In a Digital World, Iowa Expert Says Handwriting Still Matters
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: NICK BEECHER
Shawn Datchuk was at home when his 8-year-old son, Misha, brought him a birthday card from his grandma. “I can’t read this,” Misha said. When Datchuk, professor of special education at the University of Iowa College of Education, asked why, his son said, “because it’s in cursive.”
Datchuk believes these exchanges between children and their parents are common. “There tends to be this generational divide on people who grew up using cursive and those who did not,” he says.
To bridge the divide, Iowa public schools have been required to teach cursive since June 2024. The requirement states that students should begin cursive writing in second grade and show proficiency by third grade; however, not many educational handwriting resources exist.
That’s where CLIFTER (Cursive Letter Identification and Formation for Transcription and Early Reading) comes in. The free tool designed by Datchuk and a team at the Iowa Reading Research Center includes a customizable curriculum, where educators can play videos, download individual letter worksheets, and have students work toward spelling words. The research center also offers a similar resource called LIFTER (Letter Identification and Formation for Transcription and Early Reading) as a print handwriting resource.
Datchuk says the benefits of learning handwriting include and extend well beyond being able to read a grandmother’s card. Here are three reasons why handwriting benefits a young person’s education.
Handwriting improves learning.
“There’s something incredibly powerful about handwriting that isn’t really talked about in a digital age,” says Datchuk. When students handwrite notes, they synthesize rather than transcribe information. Doing so leads to critical thinking, which influences long-term memory.
Handwriting development leads to reading and writing development.
Datchuk says, “When we think about the basic building blocks of writing, the process occurs at the individual letter.” Once students feel confident in writing letters, cognitive space is then freed up for other activities like reading, writing, idea organization, and argumentation.
Its cost efficiency makes it widely accessible to students.
In the digital age, technology and device upkeep is expensive, but when a pencil tip breaks, it only needs to be sharpened. That’s why Datchuk says “handwriting tends to be the most cost-efficient and portable way for students to engage in writing at K-12 schools.”
As a free resource, CLIFTER supports many public schools across Iowa. For example, Des Moines Public Schools—the largest school district in Iowa—use CLIFTER in all their elementary buildings. It reaches over 15,000 students and saves the district hundreds of thousands of dollars each year on curriculum costs.
“Going into the future, I only see a deeper partnership between university research centers working collaboratively with schools to figure out what’s the smartest use of their precious time and resources,” says Datchuk. “This will only help the children of Iowa.”