You would be surprised at how much could be added to a child's useful knowledge if you take that 15 minutes, add the homework time devoted to cursive on top of it, and use it for a subject that is actually going to be beneficial to that child's knowledge base in the future.
It is not about teaching children to write. It is about wasting time teaching them to write in a specific way that is rarely, if ever, used; especially as it is taught.
The US is behind because outdated things such as cursive writing are left in the curriculum, and because the US has failed to move forward in an appropriate way with even the more useful subjects.
