On a recent school day, Ms. Rivera’s fourth-grade class practiced their ascending and descending cursive strokes, tracing the letters in the air above their desks. Next, they assumed the proper ...

To him, cursive feels like he’s perfecting a secret code that he believes “no one can read anymore.” If education administrators get their way, that just might be the case.

Proponents of cursive writing instruction say that although handwriting isn’t as much of a life skill as it was 20 or 30 years ago, students still need opportunities to learn and practice.

If you, like so many adults educated in the past few decades, do more “connected printing” than graceful cursive, and you want to give learning cursive a try, this is the book ideal.