Who Needs Handwriting?

[908874]

I listened to this podcast yesterday from Freakonomics titled Who needs Handwriting?

 

This controversy is not new and, as many of you, I was already aware of some of the information presented on their program.  I found the podcast very enjoyable so I thought I would share for any of you who enjoy podcasts and like this topic. 

 

 

[displace]

I read some of the transcript and may listen. For me, writing helps me remember things. It was essential for me in school.

 

DS has dysgraphia and my whole perception of writing for learning purposes (for everyone) has evaporated and/or morphed. I was surprised to learn handwriting isn't taught in our public schools where we live. And it's not graded (of course), but are others seeing your writing and judging you? Technology is so pervasive now that I think it's certainly possible to not write if one has a disability or desire not to.

Edited February 16, 2016 by displace

[908874]

Me too. If I need to remember something from a lecture I always take notes. 

[Tsuga]

I listened to this podcast yesterday from Freakonomics titled Who needs Handwriting?

 

This controversy is not new and, as many of you, I was already aware of some of the information presented on their program.  I found the podcast very enjoyable so I thought I would share for any of you who enjoy podcasts and like this topic. 

 

Thank you!

[KSinNS]

Thanks, interesting!

[Bluegoat]

I don't know.  There is research that shows that the act of handwriting helps learning to a greater degree than typing does.  And frankly I think the idea that people will have little or no cause to write by hand is on pretty shaky ground.  People do have cause, and almost always  it helps if they are legible.

 

But I'm not a huge fan of Freakonomics.  I'm not sure economists are even that good at looking at economies, much less other questions.

[Stellalarella]

I read the transcript a couple times and then read the linked article by the main subject of the interview, Anne Trubek.

 

She tells in her article how her third grader experienced great distress because he had so much trouble forming letters.  Her advocacy to drop penmanship instruction comes out of that experience.  She researched the history of handwriting, finding that the idea of seeing individuality in penmanship is a comparatively new cultural appreciation. Then she says not to be misled by any research on the positive benefits of handwriting if the research was funded by a company that has a vested interested in selling handwriting materials.

 

Here is a quote from that article in Good magazine:

"This is absurd: I am a college professor and a freelance writer, and the only time I pick up a pen is to sign a credit-card receipt. Let's stop brutalizing our kids with years of drills on the proper formation of a cursive capital "S"-handwriting is a historical blip in the long history of writing technologies, and it's time to consign to the trash heap this artificial way of making letters, along with clay tablets, smoke signals, and other arcane technologies."

 

Her basic argument is don't bother teaching it because kiddo won't need it and learning it is too hard.

 

She cautions against trusting research in favor of penmanship; however,  I have not seen a body of evidence demonstrating that penmanship is wasteful.

 

Just think of all the districts, states that have agreed with this general line of thinking.  Poof!  Just like that, the teaching of penmanship is relegated to the back, back, back burner.

 

I'm not going crazy here and saying that schools don't ever teach kids how to form letters--they do some of that.  I had two of my kids in public school.  It's just that what I saw was that even in the beginning grades, the children were not encouraged to learn a standard letter formation, or how to hold a pencil properly.  Sloppy writing wasn't corrected.  The school didn't have an agreed upon penmanship style or curriculum. 

 

I've read some of the research on pencil grip--whether it matters or not.  Quite frankly, I've found it hard to untangle.  But whether or not Janie can write nicely while clubbing her pencil, it still looks absurd and she can't see what she's doing as well.  If she decides to be a surgeon or a painter, will she need to learn how to hold an instrument correctly?  Or do they tell surgeons it doesn't  matter how you hold that knife? What is so unreasonable about teaching kids that there is a lovely, correct way to hold a pencil?  Would these same grip-clubbers let their kiddos run off to sports camp and hold the tennis racket, baseball bat, hockey stick just any ole way the mood struck them?    Coach says, hold it like this, kick it like that.  And that's the end of that argument because we shall keep practicing until you are able to get strong enough, automatic enough to enjoy the correct grip.  I'm guessing that's what many parents say about sports, but don't apply the same reasoning to holding a pencil. 

 

I would like for educators and policy makers to spend much more time thinking before making major changes like this.

 

You drop something basic that millions of people learned to do and you drop it before you really understand the value of the skill, and then it takes years of research to prove to people the skill actually was valuable, and then you have to figure out how to get the skill back into the schools, of course now being taught by a generation of teachers that can't hold a pencil properly.  

 

I love homeschooling.  I do.  I love being able to say, we shall learn how to write legibly! and I do not have to consult a principal, superintendent, and the state board of education to do so.  I can say, learning cursive is not a burden, it's a joy.  It's good for your reading ability, it's good for your writing ability, it's good to learn how to do a fine motor skill and do it correctly, it's beautiful to look at.  It's wonderful for you to learn how to perform a skill that you can use for your whole life long.

 

I'm pushing back against a world that doesn't like for kids to do anything that requires them to conform to a reasonable request like legible, neat handwriting and holding a pencil with a standard grip.  I'm pushing back against ugliness--ugliness in how you hold a pencil and ugliness in how you write.  I'm pushing back against the notion that just because we use keyboards frequently that the keyboard is somehow inherently better.

 

I wish I could sign off in cursive...hahahahahha....but I cannot, because, of course, I am using the keyboard to type this.   :lol:  :cursing:  :confused1:  :nopity:  :tongue_smilie:

 

Wake me up in 10 years and let me know if Anne Trubek and the Cursive Stoppers won the day.......

 

 

 

 

 

 

[luuknam]

Technology is so pervasive now that I think it's certainly possible to not write if one has a disability or desire not to.

 

Celery's speech therapist/case manager last year said that she uses handwriting all.the.time in her job to make notes while working on speech with a kid/group of kids, or during IEP meetings, etc. In some of those situations handwriting would probably be easier than typing.

[kiwik]

Not needing to use something after school is finished is not a reason not to be taught it. I have never had to do longjump, throw a discus, analyse poetry or a host of other things I did at school - that doesn't mean I shouldn't have been taught them.

Edited February 20, 2016 by kiwik

[3 ladybugs]

Who needs a slide rule, shorthand, or a manual typewriter? Yet even in today's society these are skills that can be useful depending on the situation. 

 

Remember the fear with Y2K? What if that actually happened and we lost all computers suddenly? Would we go to animal farm quickly? I am insuring that my children are the ones that they don't want to sacrifice as they will know how to do things without a computer. 

[lmrich]

I have too many kids in my classes at the hybrid school where I teach with horrific handwriting. They cannot take notes in class because their hands fatigue. If you learn the proper way to hold a pencil and the proper way to form letters it causes less fatgue. Handwriting instruction and practice is maybe 15 minutes a day in grades K - 4. It also teaches kids how to evaluate and compare. 

[Hunter]

Not being able to handwrite erodes confidence.

[Guest]

I have no strong opinions about handwriting. I have pretty bad handwriting myself and it doesn't bother me (and I've argued here on the forum that having non-beautiful handwriting truly does not affect my life in any way, shape or form), but it's important to me TO write. So it's a wash personally.

 

But there's something about the push to eliminate handwriting that bothers me. It make clear and obvious sense for people that CAN'T write comfortably. Of course! And how lucky for such people to live in today's age, with access to technology that assists them in doing what they want to do despite their struggles!

 

For everyone else though? They *can* write, we just aren't going to teach them because: computers? Seems like a short-sighted and particularly egregious expression of hubris to me. Not because it helps us remember information, or anything like that. But...I dunno...the complete and sudden abandonment of our primary means of communication after speaking for the last ~lots~ of years...it ain't right.

[kiwik]

I must admit it annoys me though that I sent both my boys to school with a correct pencil grip (that they had been using nearly 2 years) and after two years at school they both held their pencil like they had never touched one before.  I have mostly remediated ds8, now I am starting with ds6.

[Cara4497]

Who needs a slide rule, shorthand, or a manual typewriter? Yet even in today's society these are skills that can be useful depending on the situation. 

 

Remember the fear with Y2K? What if that actually happened and we lost all computers suddenly? Would we go to animal farm quickly? I am insuring that my children are the ones that they don't want to sacrifice as they will know how to do things without a computer. 

 

Agreed. It is naive to think that computers and electronics will always be there.

[Stellalarella]

I want to make a general observation that our culture, which values individuality very much, has a blind spot for how our personal preferences can impact others.

 

For instance, we can teach handwriting as a utility that one only does for himself (and thus it can be done in any style, quality, or skill) or we can teach handwriting as something that can give light and beauty to self AND others, because the handwriting is legible or even lovely to look at.  

 

In the end, though, I think that the tradition is worth keeping because a discipline (like penmanship) of practicing a skill, and the aim of beauty is both useful and rewarding for the individual and the society.  

 

This cultural/educational establishment debate over penmanship is actually helping me  think about some of the other areas that I am making decisions in--i am now asking if I am blinding myself when I make other educational decisions based primarily on utility.

Edited February 21, 2016 by Stellalarella

[FloridaLisa]

I also think there's a link between handwriting and spelling for some kids IME. Several of my kids needed the act of sounding it out while writing to really nail down some spelling and think it through. I suppose you can do that on the keyboard as well, but then there's the extra layer of thought of keyboard memory. 

 

Also, I would think handwriting helps develop fine motor hand skills for many other tasks as well.

 

FWIW, I still want my kids to be able to address an envelope by hand, send a handwritten thank you note, write on a whiteboard at a meeting, etc. 

[Bluegoat]

I also think there's a link between handwriting and spelling for some kids IME. Several of my kids needed the act of sounding it out while writing to really nail down some spelling and think it through. I suppose you can do that on the keyboard as well, but then there's the extra layer of thought of keyboard memory. 

 

Also, I would think handwriting helps develop fine motor hand skills for many other tasks as well.

 

FWIW, I still want my kids to be able to address an envelope by hand, send a handwritten thank you note, write on a whiteboard at a meeting, etc. 

 

Yes, this is what I find strange about this article - people have to write things by hand all the time.  If this lady thinks that is unusual, she is in a weird reality.

 

A friend of mine told me recently that the best way to get good service at the lumber store is to write down what I want on the cut off end of a board, because that is what builders do when they are on the jobsite, so the salespeople think you know what you are about.

 

Somehow I can't picture typing what I want to hand to the guy I want to pick things up while I am on a construction site.

[Stellalarella]

To be fair, I haven't heard calls to abandon the instruction of teaching handwriting altogether, it's just that because the general view of it has slid into an "expendable personal utility" many schools and homeschools alike don't require kids to learn to handwrite neatly or hold the pencil properly.  Common core doesn't make the instruction of cursive an objective at all.

 

Students still learn to print, of course, i would just say that in general, the idea of "penmanship" is fading. 

 

Unless, of course, you are a student at  my house.  

[Susan in TX]

I have kids in public high school and the state standardized English writing exam has to be written, not typed on a computer. Same goes for AP tests, ACT and SAT. Not being able to write quickly, easily, and legibly is a real handicap.

 

Susan in TX

[RoundAbout]

Yes, this is what I find strange about this article - people have to write things by hand all the time.  If this lady thinks that is unusual, she is in a weird reality.

 

In the past two months I have written three handwritten notes/cards - one a thank you note to a paid professional for giving their time, and two others to friends for their birthdays.  In addition I make to-do lists, grocery lists, notes to DH, etc. It's not a ton of writing, but its not rare either.  

 

It's unfortunate that her child had such difficulty learning to form letters, but I don't think that's the norm, and certainly not a reason to throw it out for every child..  I taught proper printing in pre-school, one letter per day and cursive starting in Kindergarten.  It's been completely painless and took maybe 10 min a day practice?  Having basically legible handwriting allows DS to write his own stories, games, treasure maps, annotated drawings, etc. etc. in his free time without depending on a device.  It's a form of freedom.  Not to mention doing basic school work like narration summaries and spelling lists.  

[theelfqueen]

My nearly-15 year old has passable English penmanship... but his Russian is BEAUTIFUL :)

 

[El...]

My nearly-15 year old has passable English penmanship... but his Russian is BEAUTIFUL :)

I just let Dd8 start practicing Greek letters with calligraphy markers.  Fun, fun, fun!

 

Also, "Learning is so hard" :nopity: has never been a great reason to not learn something (all other things being equal... neurotypical child, etc....).

 

Wow, this makes me sound all tiger mom.  Haha!  I'm really not.

[PeacefulChaos]

Astro has horrible handwriting.  I think part of it stems from pencil grip, but honestly, I just don't think it matters that much - I never saw any real point in teaching pencil grip because my assumption has always been that people pick up a pencil and use it in the way that is most comfortable for them.  Link, DH, and I all hold our writing instruments differently but can write just fine - my handwriting is the neatest, and I'm 99% sure my pencil grip isn't 'correct'.  :lol:

 

So with that I've not had Pink do an official 'handwriting' anything in 1st grade.  In K she did, for beginning letters, but as I was looking for her stuff for 1st I was just like is that really necessary? when I looked at HW - and it wasn't.  

I don't intend to buy handwriting books for her at all anymore, unless she asks for them for some reason.  She does enough writing that she gets practice.  I'm going to print off some handwriting from donnayoung to do cursive next year.  

 

So yeah, I guess we 'do' handwriting - but I don't think it's something that's a huuuuuuuuge deal.  I think it's important to know *how* to write, but it's equally important to know how to spell, use grammar, etc.

 

And honestly, learning to write cursive doesn't necessarily mean they'll be able to read the Declaration of Independence.  :lol:  I always laugh at that one, because IIRC the wording is unfamiliar to what we say now, though I'm sure that with effort it'd be decipherable.  But honestly, even adults have trouble reading *some* cursive handwriting.  I write in cursive for the boys sometimes so they can get used to seeing different scripts and ways of doing things, because honestly everyone sort of develops their own way of writing.