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I don't know about the schools around here, but I was supposed to teach "cursive strokes" (the pre-cursor to real cursive) when I taught second grade. I'll be honest, my kids' handwriting was so awful, I totally ignored cursive strokes and focused on general penmanship. I have no idea if the 3rd grade teacher taught it or not.

ETA: No, I can't think of why it would be important. Maybe for schools where most students are on/above grade level, but with my students 1-2 years behind when they came to me (in 2nd grade!), I wasn't going to spend time on it...

Some teachers teach it a few minutes a day. Seriously. It's sad. Handwriting is so important and many want to, but with more rigorous content they feel like they understandably don't have the time. Even our handwriting adoption (handwriting without tears) is up this year and not being renewed in the district I work in because it just costs too much.

As someone who works at a historical society, I think that knowing how to read and write cursive is so important! If you can't read it, then you will not be able to read historical documents. As a kid, I was so excited to learn because writing in cursive was so grown up. I still prefer cursive to this day.

@avivoca: I thought about that (historical documents) before I wrote, but 1) my focus on low-income students makes me focus on more applicable skills first, and 2) Most of those documents are translated elsewhere.

Do I think it's awesome to be able to read older documents? Absolutely. I just couldn't justify spending 10-20 minutes/day focusing on that skill when my instructional time was so limited. I happily provided materials to students who were interested, though.

DH is a 3rd grade teacher and he said he does teach cursive. I think they had taken it out of the state curriculum, but recently added it back in.

I teach in a northern Canadian community where most students are behind grade level. my first grade students have extremely poor penmanship. I spend most of our writing time reminding them to use finger spaces, leave spaces between the lines, stay on one line and to pay attention to how tall their letters are. my goal is that when they get to second next year their writing will be legible and not having sentences being one giant word.
cursive writing is not part of Saskatchewan curriculum as far as I know. I don't believe the 2nd 3rd or 4th grade teacher is officially teaching it in my school.

@Jess1483: I saw a cool gizmo in pinterest to teach spacing that I'm introducing soon, a spacer cat on a popsicle stick!

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I remember refusing to learn in elementary school 20ish years ago. Random memory. I was not diagnosed as dyslexic until college, that explains a lot, no wonder it was so hard.

My last school (K-12) required students to write everything - homework, class work, notes, etc. - in cursive once they learned it in 3rd grade. But in my school before that, I asked my 9th grade students to sign a safety contract, and that's when my co-teacher and I discovered none of them had ever learned cursive so we stopped and taught each one how to sign their own name.

I think it is important, if only for the fact that many documents are written in it. I actually try not to use it when I scrapbook after the signature incident because I worry one day my grandchildren or great grandchildren won't be able to read it!

I don't know, but I will teach my kids at home if I have to (at least to read it). Lots of things are still written in cursive, just look at all the holiday cards right now! So they won't be able to read them? That would be ridiculous.

@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: yeah my mom has super fancy cursive that's hard to read, too! I don't use cursive often unless I'm writing quickly but I just can't imagine telling your boss "hey I can't read these notes because they're cursive..."