We’re glad to see Gov. Josh Shapiro has signed legislation backed by Rep. Kathy Rapp to mandate cursive instruction in Pennsylvania schools.

The commonwealth joins nearly two dozen states to require cursive instruction after many schools across the country stopped teaching cursive after the implementation of the Common Core State Standards, which placed a greater emphasis on keyboarding. House Bill 17 is a needed step to make sure that children are familiar with the way that we’ve communicated for centuries.

“Cursive isn’t just about handwriting. It’s about building connections: to our past, to our learning and to the world around us,” said bill sponsor Rep. Dane Watro, R-Luzerne. “By teaching cursive, we’re giving students tools that enhance their minds and preserve our shared heritage.”

In our view, there is plenty of room in lesson plans for both cursive and keyboarding. It’s hard to believe that there was a need for bills like House Bill 17. A generation of students learned cursive and typing at the same time – often on an actual typewriter or on the old Apple computers that were found in schools throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Both cursive and keyboarding were necessary skills then and remain so today. They can, and should, coexist.

But there is a problem with bills like Watro’s. There will be a time when cursive instruction bills will have outlived their usefulness. Cursive won’t always be a necessity. How many children these days learn Morse Code?

How many can follow flag signals? How many know how to send telegrams? There was a time when those forms of communication were as ubiquitous as cursive. All have faded from memory. Eventually, cursive will likely fade away too.

But that day isn’t today.