A member of the Maine Legislature has announced that he is sponsoring a bill that, if passed, will require schools to provide instruction in cursive writing to children in grades 3-5.

The Press Herald article on the news (“New bill would write cursive into law,” Feb. 27) included remarks from enthusiasts about the presumed benefits for all learners and also a perspective from a local superintendent suggesting the need to consider the relative importance of cursive instruction compared to other needs of contemporary life that schools try to address in their curricula.

To other members of the Legislature deciding whether to hop on to the cursive bandwagon or to those who find themselves drawn to a cursive crusade, I respectfully appeal to you: Please slow down.

The arguments for and against cursive instruction have had a belabored presence in educational chatter for decades. At various times they have become heated enough to erupt into controversy. Lost in the hoopla is the simple truth that there are no definitive or absolute answers about whether, how or why to teach cursive in schools.

Moreover, cursive instruction is one of many pedagogical choices that outstanding educational research or first-rate curriculum design will never resolve for all classrooms and all students. The reasons used for cursive instruction and the variability of students receiving that instruction have a profound effect on what actually happens when it’s taught. Purpose and context matter.

Yes, let’s champion the idea that schools should be places to introduce young people to multiple ways of artful expression. Attempting deftly executed handwriting is one such way that can be exciting and engaging for some students. In that sense, cursive is not unlike a choice that some schools could make to teach woodcarving, origami or collage.

An important aspect of our human experience is the power to discover how we might strive to create and share something beautiful. It is worth acknowledging, however, that we do not all find or become at peace with the same expressive outlets.

In classrooms, unfortunately, it has become common for cursive writing to function as a condition or requirement, not a form of expression to discover. Notice how unnecessarily it became an ability essential to the perception of academic success. Children with poor cursive have been called “careless” students. Before students could produce digital texts, essays often received failing grades because the writer’s cursive was illegible, thus judged to be indicative of haphazard thought.

Moreover, the expectation for acceptable cursive at times became a spirit killer. I recall being an elementary school student in the 1950s, doing my math homework at my family’s kitchen table and repeatedly starting over when my name and date that I was trying to place on the top line of the paper — what my teacher called a “perfect heading” — drooped below the second or third line.

Etched in my memory are the laborious movements to get even a few letters to look acceptable and the feeling of frustration as I crumpled and tossed sheets of paper on which I managed to produce only a few incorrect squiggles. When I looked at my loose-leaf binder, I didn’t see a repository for assignments; I saw my accomplice in wasting paper and churning out messy work.

That backstory about cursive writing is reason for caution, I maintain, because somehow the notion that cursive writing is associated with virtue lingers. The so-called discipline acquired by pressing, legally and otherwise, for universal attainment of legible cursive writing deserves critical examination.

Some of the individuals quoted in the article even talk about cursive writing in terms of its promise to build character. My appeal to slow down the effort to enact laws about cursive is a simple request to recognize that having a knack for cursive writing is neither an indicator of character nor an essential skill for the 21st century.

At the same time, I do agree that doing something beautifully is always a worthwhile aim for schooling. The really important lesson for our children (and us) to learn is that we do not all have the same way of doing beautiful things.