California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill this month that would require schools to teach cursive writing to students in first through sixth grade.

The bill was written by state assemblywoman and former educator Sharon Quirk-Silva.

"I want to see students all have the same access to our history really, it's our historical documents,” she says. “It came out of myself going onto 23andMe not too long ago and looking up some family records and realizing many of them were written in cursive."

Writing in cursive fell out of practice as many students started using computers and smart devices.

“There's a lot of benefit to having cursive back in our instructional practices because it activates a portion of the brain that doesn't occur in print and/or typing. It actually makes writing fluency easier for many children,” says California educator Vicki Gravlin, executive director of Curriculum Instruction for Oceanside Unified.

The new California law goes into effect in January 2024.