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WILKES-BARRE, Pa. (AP) — John Hancock's signature on the Declaration of Independence may be the most famous inscription in American history, but here's the question: Assuming no pre-existing knowledge, could your grandparents read it? How about your kids? And in the age of the internet, does knowing cursive writing matter? Legend says that Hancock signed the Declaration flamboyantly "so King George could read it without his spectacles." But one need not be the president of the Continental Congress to take pride in a signature. Take Alexander Gryziec. All of 8 years old and still grappling with the notion of history — much less his place in it — the second-grader at Lee Park Elementary in Hanover Township eagerly demonstrated he could write his name, in cursive, legibly: "Alex." He beamed with unabashed pride. Not to be outdone and unsolicited, classmate Roxy Brandolino held up a paper with "Roxy" on it, grinning as she boasted, "I can write my name, too!" When asked to write their last name, each demurred. Alexander noted he hadn't learned the upper case "G," and Roxy simply conceded: "I can't yet." But they will. Hanover Area School District incorporates the commercially available Zaner-Bloser handwriting curriculum from kindergarten through third grade, spending about 20 minutes each day on handwriting — first in printed letters, then in cursive. They do this, Lee Park Principal Ann Marie Mantione noted, despite pressure in recent years that seems to be squeezing cursive into classroom corners, if not out the door. "About five years ago there was a really big push," Mantione said. "A lot of people were saying we need to take handwriting out of the curriculum." For years administrators have lamented the shift in academic focus, first to improving scores on standardized tests, then to getting tech — keyboards and computers — into the early grades. "Our district never jumped on that bandwagon," Mantione said with a hint of pride. ___ Common Core In the past decade, there has been a backlash against disappearing cursive lessons. Some people — often those who can remember seemingly relentless work on penmanship in school — blame the "Common Core" standards, which were finalized in 2010. The optional standards, created independently by state leaders and state school officers, do not require cursive to be taught. An October 2016 article in the newspaper Education Week noted that some states responded by adding cursive to their state standards. Louisiana went so far as to mandate cursive instruction every year from third grade through 12th. But supporters of Common Core counter that it is a floor, not a ceiling, and that there is a difference between saying what must be taught and what can be taught. Schools can and do include cursive, a fact made obvious nationally by the fact that at least seven states mandate it: Louisiana, North Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia, Kansas and California. Eight local districts contacted for this article have at least some class time devoted to printing in kindergarten and first grade, and cursive in second grade. But it can be as little as 45 minutes a week. "I don't think they spend much time in it at all," Greater Nanticoke Area Superintendent Ronald Grevera said. "There is less and less emphasis on handwriting these days thanks to the proliferation of the computer. " For many, he speculated, learning to write in cursive is considered necessary to sign your name, though he also cited the value of being able to read primary-source documents, such as the original Declaration of Independence or old family letters. "There are some limited units where students are provided with instruction on using cursive," Dallas Superintendent Tom Duffy said of his district. "There is not an across-the-board requirement for cursive, even in elementary grades." "We don't have a set curriculum on cursive, but it is encouraged in second and third grade," Pittston Area Superintendent Kevin Booth said. "It's something we're hoping to emphasize more than previous administrations. Many of those interviewed echoed the sentiments of Tom Zelinka, English language arts coordinator for the Wilkes-Barre Area School District. Cursive, he conceded, "has become a small part of our curriculum," taught primarily in second grade for about 15 minutes a day, three days a week. Zelinka said there is research suggesting students who learn and write in cursive "do better in memory concepts," and that some research shows students with dyslexia — problems reading despite having normal intelligence — may benefit from learning cursive. "Unfortunately, with the rigor of all the other subjects, it's hard to keep cursive in," Zelinka said. But he noted it is not the only old-school tool to fall by the wayside. Science students use digital scales, not the old balance scales with calibrated weights. Slide rules disappeared from math class decades ago. And remember learning to diagram sentences? You'll be hard-pressed to find any extensive lessons in that disappearing art. ___ Socrates weighs in The printing press was invented nearly 600 years ago, the typewriter more than 150 years ago, and the electronic word processor some 50 years ago, yet there was no recorded warning of the demise of cursive with the advent of those technologies. Why now? In her recent book "The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting," author Anne Trubek skewers some common conceptions regarding handwriting, including the notion that it has long been a treasured mode of self-expression. Trubek counters with a quote from the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates, as relayed by Plato. Socrates scorned the notion of men learning to write because it "will implant forgetfulness in their souls." He prized live conversation as true communication. "If you ask a piece of writing a question, it remains silent." Nor has handwriting always been a proud method of self-expression, a la Hancock (who, Ben Blatt suggested in a 2014 Slate post, may not have written extra large so much as the other signers of the Declaration wrote extra small). Trubek notes the history of writing as far back as cuneiform — developed by the Sumerians around 3500 B.C. — has been to make writing as uniform as possible, for the obvious reason: Everyone needs to be able to read it. That certainly is the case in the classrooms of the Hanover Area School District. From kindergarten through first grade, children are taught to print in a consistent fashion, with the strokes deliberately made in an order that will flow into cursive writing beginning in second grade, Mantione said. Go to any session from pre-K to grade 2 and the teacher starts the lesson the same way: drawing lines on the board to guide the sizes of lower- and upper-case letters — though the terms vary for younger children. "The top is the sky," teacher Aimee Bono told her pre-kindergarten class at the Lyndwood Learning Center in Hanover Township. She drew a solid line, and then a sun above it. "The bottom line is the grass," she said, drawing a parallel line — in green — lower on the board. "I like the grass," one girl cooed. "The middle is the road," Bono continued, drawing a dotted line between the two solid ones, then punctuating the notion by outlining a car driving down her "road." While the students in her class don't worry about complicated cursive terms like "check stroke" — that little arc you finish some letters with that joins with the next letter, as on a lower-case "b'' — they practice much the same way as the higher grades do. With variations for age, the routine is drawing in the air, then on the board, then in work books. "Upper-case 'J' starts right on the sky," Bono demonstrated to her class of students ages 3 and 4. "Down from the sky, touch the ground and spring right back up to the road." "I can do that!" Kara Norvell blurted. The students then took turns printing a capital "J'' on the white board. As in other classes, shortcomings are never belittled, but corrections are encouraged. When Wyatt Butcher decided his J only had to go to the "middle of the road," Bono told him it was good but should be a bit bigger. He tried again, then turned to go back to his spot on the rug, beaming. "I made a J!" ___ Value in writing In the past decade, studies have suggested that not practicing the associated motor skills of handwriting can make it more difficult for people to communicate their ideas. A frequently cited study — mentioned in a 2012 Education Week article — pointed to one study using Magnetic Resonance Imaging that offered some evidence that "handwriting, not keyboarding, leads to adult-like neural processing in the visual system." The upshot: Learning to write by hand makes better readers. But Vanderbilt University's Steve Graham told Education Week that it's a mistake to think cursive writing holds any special properties. It's important children learn both handwriting — either print or cursive — and keyboarding well enough that the act doesn't interfere with the thought behind it. "As far as I'm concerned, kids need to have a legible and fluent style of handwriting, and they need to have fluent typing skills," Graham, a special-education professor, told Education Week. "But that's because I don't want kids to have to think about those things. I want them thinking about what they're going to say and how they're going to say it." Virginia Berninger, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington's College of Education, wrote a 2013 recap of handwriting research for the National Association of State Boards of Education that spelled out key findings. Along with improvement in reading, they include: . No clear evidence that printing is better than cursive, despite the American system of teaching printing before cursive. In many European countries, cursive is taught first. . Learning to print and write in cursive can increase a student's abilities in "cross-case abstraction," a helpful skill in keyboarding, where all the letters on the keys actually are upper case, and a youngster needs to imagine the lower-case version. . Handwriting, whether printing or writing, is important in learning math for obvious reasons: Students typically learn their numbers, and equations, writing on paper. But like Graham, Berninger concludes there is no special magic in learning cursive over print. She summed it up with a phrase in her title: "multilingual by hand." ___ Cursive champs Students come to the writing table with different skills; second-grade teacher Jennifer Grevera at Hanover Area's Lee Park said she's seen some correlation with family size and a child's place in the sibling age range. Those with older brothers or sisters who already know how to write are more likely to have some skill — writing their names, for example — before any lesson begins. But regardless of where they start, Grevera said students gain one other benefit from learning cursive: a sense of accomplishment. "They can be so proud when they learn to write their names," she said, as proved by Alexander and Roxy eagerly showing off their penned monikers. But it doesn't end with mastering the skills. There is a state and national writing competition. Students write an assigned sentence — "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is a likely one because it has all the letters of the alphabet — and mail it in for judgment. Lake-Lehman School District has had considerable success in the contest, run by Zaner-Bloser, with state champions in several grades during the past few years. The district even had one student reach the national semifinals. "It was really cool," Gracie James, a third-grader at Lehman-Jackson Elementary and the daughter of Principal Donald James, said with a smile. "We got a huge diamond." That would be the diamond-shaped trophy Gracie won way back in first grade, when she entered the printing part of the competition. This will be her first year entering in cursive. "It's kind of hard," she conceded regarding the transition. Benjamin Wnuk won the state title last year in grade 4, and demonstrated his championship moves with the "quick brown fox" missive. He wrote with such care that the 35-letter sentence took nearly four minutes to complete and stretched out so much that "the lazy dog" needed a second line. Asked to demonstrate his "everyday" cursive, he wrote the sentence in about half the time, squeezing the letters so closely that everything except "dog" fit on one line. His toughest letter? "Upper-case W," he conceded, acknowledging that's unfortunate for a young man named Wnuk. Neither Gracie nor Benjamin was aware of any research on handwriting, including one study by Vanderbilt's Graham that showed students with neater handwriting on tests tend to get better grades than those with sloppier penmanship, even if both produce comparable work. The handwriting contest entry includes the question "How does your handwriting make you a better reader and writer," and Benjamin's response on his award-winning entry was "because it requires patience, practice and skill." Gracie answered her question two years ago — "What do you like about handwriting?" — by printing "because you can tell many stories." The deadline for entries in the annual competition loomed. It was, not incidentally, Jan. 23. The birthday of John Hancock. ___ Online: http://bit.ly/2khslEA ___ Information from: Times Leader, https://www.timesleader.com

Despite push to scrap cursive writing, schools stick with it