New Jersey lawmakers push to bring cursive back to schools. Sister Margaret Mary would approve!

Sometimes I glance at my penmanship while taking notes and imagine how horrified Sister Margaret Mary would be.

One of my most enduring memories from Our Lady of Refuge School in the Bronx during the 1980s is that stern elder nun, her gaze burning through my sheet of crisp loose-leaf paper as I struggled with my assignment.

I swear I can still hear her warning that if I didn’t get those lines just right, I could kiss my future goodbye. But that may have just been the judgment in her eyes talking. Either way, I practiced and practiced, determined to get her approval.

The power of nuns is real. But so is the toll my handwriting has taken over the years, ravaged by the hurried scribbles of a reporter trying to cram pages full of details and quotes.

Forgive me, sister, for I have sinned.

Fast-forward 30-plus years and Sister Margaret Mary was the first person who came to mind when I read about two New Jersey lawmakers pushing to bring penmanship back.

Take a seat, kiddos. It’s time for a quick story: Once upon a time, cursive was a staple of American education. Then computers and smartphones stormed the kingdom — because who needs to write a letter when you can fire off an email or text? Who wants to fill notebook after notebook with longhand notes when computers can do it faster? After it was exiled from the Common Core State Standards in 2010, cursive was mostly banished, never, many thought, to be seen again.

But then the kingdom started to miss it …

Now, if a bill from Democratic State Sens. Angela McKnight and Shirley Turner passes — they hope by the end of the year — New Jersey will join two dozen other states requiring schools to include some type of cursive instruction. (A similar Pennsylvania bill stalled in 2023.)

It’s time to take the curse out of cursive, McKnight told me when we spoke this week.

McKnight, 48, has fond memories of penmanship lessons with Mrs. Peterson at P.S. 29 in Jersey City. But her push for legislation that would incorporate cursive lessons into the curriculum for students in third through fifth grade came years later when she discovered her third-grade son couldn’t read her handwritten notes.

Sure, nostalgia plays a role, McKnight agreed. But the case for cursive runs deeper. It helps students access and understand historical documents in their original form. It improves fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and literacy. And let’s be honest — cutting down on screen time is always a good idea.

“Yes, I know we have technology,” she said. “But you want to be able to take your child to the museum and say, ‘Here’s the Declaration of Independence,’ and know they can read it and appreciate it. And then think about your grandmother, who wrote out her recipes that your kids can’t even read. Culture needs to be protected and restored.”

Critics argue that with limited resources in schools, there just isn’t enough time to introduce another subject. Better to teach typing, they say, but McKnight says it doesn’t have to be a stand-alone class, and anyone who suggests young people need a typing class clearly hasn’t watched them text.

Here’s another thing: With so much vitriol spewed from our fingertips these days, what’s not to love about slowing down, making our words — and our interactions — more intentional?

That thought made me wistful. So I called my old eighth-grade alma mater.

I knew Sister Margaret Mary was gone. But while many public schools scrapped cursive over the last decade, Catholic schools often held on, valuing penmanship as a discipline.

I wondered if Our Lady of Refuge was still among them.

“Sadly, no,” the woman on the phone told me, before adding that what she was about to say next was even sadder.

This is Our Lady of Refuge’s final school year. After a century of educating students, it’s closing its doors.

Nothing lasts forever. But Sister Margaret Mary’s lessons endure — not just about penmanship, but about taking care with your words and how you present them to the world.

And that’s a lesson worth bringing back.