(WHTM) -- Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Adams (R-Wayne/Pike) announced his plans this week to introduce legislation that requires cursive be taught in Pennsylvania schools.

If passed, the bill would require cursive handwriting or joined italics to be taught at certain grade levels.

“Being able to write and read cursive is a fundamental and necessary skill for everyone to learn. Our founding documents like the Constitution and Declaration of Independence are written in cursive. People sign their names in cursive, and official documents often require writing in cursive to memorialize business,” Adams said about the bill.

Pennsylvania is not this only state to consider requiring cursive in schools. According to the National Education Association, there were 21 states that required cursive to be part of the public school curriculum in 2022.

Cursive handwriting advocates argue that the practice has cognitive and education benefits, an argument which is supported by a number of academic studies.

Adams pointed to this in his announcement of the bill.

“Recent studies indicate that learning cursive has many developmental benefits including increased hand-eye coordination, critical thinking and increased self-confidence in students learning how to write in cursive,” he said. “The added benefit of learning to write in cursive is the creation of a written self-identity that can separate human work from that of Artificial Intelligence and stymie plagiarism. It is clearly critical that the basics of this important skill be required in the classroom.”