Cursive teaching seems to be a hot topic in America at the moment. Speaking as an outsider my feeling is that the US handwriting tradition going back to P R Spencer is such an important cultural asset that to lose it would be a tragedy. That said, having read a few discussions on the subject just lately, it seems that there are plenty of people who really dislike the style and would like nothing better than to see it wither away.
So far as I can tell an analogous feeling arose in the UK around the 1930s amongst educators - this was the era of Art Deco, streamlining and high Modernism, and the kind of copperplate derived handwriting with which we'd been struggling since the 18th century seemed out of step with the times. People like Edward Johnston and Eric Gill were influential in the fields of calligraphy and typography, whilst Alfred Fairbank and Marion Richardson looked to Italic models for a new, cleaner handwriting. So whilst my father, at school in the 30s, learned to write something like an English version of business script (a simplified, monoline copperplate), by 1970 I was being taught the Marion Richardson Style of Handwriting. Which can look very nice with patience, but which is by no means a fast hand (so I wound up copying my dad in the end). Fast forward to today, and it seems that structured handwriting tuition has all but disappeared from the curriculum, with the result that if there is a distinctive English script nowadays it's an infantilised form of printing, usually very rounded and for some reason frequently with a backward slant. Legible enough, but surely laborious and better suited to writing out greetings cards than anything of greater length or gravitas.
My point - and yes I've come to it at last - is that business writing, Palmer Method, cursive or whatever you want to call it is intensely practical, quite apart from aesthetic or historical considerations. And it's by no means obvious that there's anything to replace it. So three cheers for Michael Sull, home educators and Florida.