I don’t know how your elementary school worked but we used to write on paper with a x-height line and a ascender line. As you can see I still need those lines lol. I wonder why these are not the standard lines you get on your lined paper. They are much better then the single big ones. The total line height is only slightly more than standard lines. If I had kept writing on this, maybe my handwriting might not have suffered as much.
In my area of the rural US, our schools have stopped teaching cursive because teachers can’t get kids to do any of the classwork or homework. It’s a sad state of affairs.
I’m sorry to hear that. I actually have no clue how schools have changed since I left so who knows what they teach now.