Forty out of 50 states in the United States have adopted the Common Core curriculum, which phases out cursive writing in the classroom, for their public schools.

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Besides the intrinsic value of cursive writing, some are worried that phasing it out may make texts written in cursive go the way of hieroglyphics, as McGrann pointed out.

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As one of my professors once explained, doing surgery is no more physically difficult than writing in cursive.

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But educators like McGrann feel cursive is more than a traditional style of writing.

CNN: Cursive vs. typing: Which should schools teach?

The writing isn't on the wall yet for cursive, even if children don't learn it in school, she said.

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"After that last burst of clarity, once literacy spreads beyond professional scribes to ordinary readers like you and me, manuscript writing becomes distorted and stretched out by the very difficult-to-read early modern cursive script of the 15th to 17th century, " he said.

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