Love it or hate it, it appears that cursive handwriting has become a dying art. Of the nearly 1.5 million high-school students who took the SAT in 2006, only 15 percent used cursive on the essay portion, according to the College Board.

In an age when even second-graders are receiving computer instruction, and thanks to the mounting emphasis on standardized testing, less and less time is being devoted to the art of penmanship.

Call me a Luddite or old-fashioned, but this makes me sad.

A recent Seattle Times article revealed that a 2003 Vanderbilt University survey of primary school teachers found that the average classroom gets fewer than 10 minutes per day of penmanship instruction.

Tragically, as federal and local governments continue to slash funding for arts education, the age-old emphasis on fine and proper penmanship may soon be the last vestiges of artist training our young students receive.

As a first-grader, I longed for the day in which I would be taught cursive — the beautiful, flowing writing of my elders that would unlock all the keys to adulthood and its privileges.

When the day to learn cursive came, I would spend hours delicately forming the curves and swoops of letters, with hopes to elevate my signature from one of banal "a"s and "e"s to a single flowing expression of art.

Later I would learn the equally important skill of typing such words as "saw," "sad," "was" and "wad" with my left hand at satisfactory speeds, thanks to Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing.

Unfortunately, in many cases, the instruction is becoming moot. By the time children enter primary school these days, most have a decent grasp on typing and certainly know how to navigate a desktop — if not their older sibling's instant messaging software.

Learning to write cursive — though seemingly dowdy and superfluous to some — teaches children attention to detail and develops their fine motor skills in ways computer instruction cannot duplicate.

Though not the replacement of a drawing class, it also trains the eyes of students who may one day discover of love of drafting — a skill that, to this day, remains more effective on the page than on the computer screen.

According to the Seattle Times, "In Washington, state standards allow printing or cursive as long as it is legible. Local districts start teaching cursive in the primary grades."

It seems obvious that as long as we evaluate students based on written examinations, shouldn't our standards strive for better than "legible" handwriting?

Sloppy handwriting — though increasingly tolerated — not only hurts a student's individual presentation, but also hinders her ability to express herself in a public setting.

Shouldn't we strive to educate students to be coherent on the computer screen, the blue book page and in their Mead notebooks?

I still use cursive since I was taught its efficiency in primary school, and it has always been faster and more legible on timed tests.

When faced with an essay question, my pen glides across the page and barely leaves its surface, save for a mark of punctuation. My letters and thoughts connect in a single stream and motion that flows into a larger whole.

I may never reach 90 words per minute on the keyboard, but because of my instruction in cursive, I developed a life-long love and appreciation for the art possible in language and the beauty of writing.

Shouldn't all children have a chance at this before they become glued to the glowing screen?

Reach columnist Maureen Trantham at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.