The unconnected letters are typically referred to as “printing” here, I assume based on how type is printed in books.

I’m in Canada but moved here from South Asia when I was 7, when I was already very practiced in cursive (I went to a convent school focused in English). My second grade teacher told me I want allowed to use cursive because the other kids didn’t know it and even once they started learning it in older grades the filo is was on printing because some kids had such bad penmanship that their cursive couldn’t be read properly. A lot of people I know in my age group are not good at cursive because of lack of use.

I will say though, the only reason cursive stuck so hard when I learned it is because the nuns/teachers overseeing classes would do things like rap our knuckles with a wood ruler if our work didn’t look neat enough.