My son in Italy is in second trade and reads and writes fluently cursive and printed text.<p>Perhaps the trick is that Italian doesn't have such a fucked up spelling so that kids don't have to waste so much time wrapping their heads around what's this "writing" stuff all about.
Kind of a waste - cursive seems way harder to read (to me anyway), and studies show it isn't any faster to write.<p>Sorta like teaching and encouraging Pig Latin.