To your cursive comment; research, from years back, show that the majority of kids better retain information when they write it. Having taught high school kids who could neither read nor write cursive and must print everything, yes I gave lectures and told them to take notes (how horrible of me) they were unable to write at a fast pace and had to concentrate on printing each letter, just mind boggling. I can take notes in cursive without looking at paper, I’m sure most of us who wrote in cursive can. The end result is that their retention rate is abysmal.