I agree that cursive handwriting has become useless.

As a child, even many years before having access to personal computers or any other kind of typewriting, I have switched my handwriting from cursive to using the kind of sans-serif typefaces used in technical drawing and since then I have never written again cursively, with the exception of my signature, where required on official documents.

Nevertheless, I believe that some kind of calligraphy is necessary for developing fine motor skills in children, unless it is replaced with some other activity that requires a similar precision in the movements of the fingers and of the hand.

They started teaching it again because it correlated with better outcomes for things seemingly unrelated to writing. And it was important to learn it before typing supposedly. There is probably some better way to accomplish whatever it is actually doing, but they don't seem to know that.

They stopped teaching cursive for a number of years but all the schools in my area start it around age 6 or 7 now. They start typing the next year with some horribly boring typing program.