Folks usually credit score my good handwriting to my Catholic faculty training—like a nun with a ruler and a style for corporal punishment perfected my penmanship. However that’s not why. It’s due to my mother. An engineer by commerce, she will execute the type of good block letters that solely include years of engaged on a drafting board. As a child, I labored to imitate her print in addition to her extremely ornate cursive. I don’t observe these abilities almost sufficient as an grownup, although: As a reporter, pace trumps magnificence in terms of taking notes. Now, with a lot of my job being executed on a keyboard, I fear even that scrawl is in danger.
Mine isn’t an remoted devolution. Mother and father, educators, and fellow penmanship advocates have been lamenting the top of handwriting for years. E-mail started edging out playing cards and letters many years in the past. Then smartphones hit the market, and our reliance on paper notes, wall calendars, and Publish-it reminders dwindled. In US public faculties, the main focus has shifted from handwriting to typing, as increasingly children are uncovered to iPads and computer systems in tandem with pencils. And previously few years, AI has made it in order that people barely have to suppose, not to mention jot one thing down. Now greater than ever, it may appear as if handwriting is doomed.
It’s not.
Whereas the handwringing and feelings are at an all-time excessive, the case for handwriting is stronger than ever, too. Certain, a few of the attachment is nostalgia. Within the US, there’s even a bizarre sense that realizing cursive is a few kind of civic responsibility for People. All of these arguments for handwriting overlook one thing: There are actual advantages to studying to carry a pen in your hand and use it.
US public faculties nonetheless require that children be taught handwriting, so it’s not but a misplaced artwork, however there may be some proof that digital natives are much less “prepared” for writing now than college students previously, says Karen Ray, a lecturer in occupational remedy on the College of Newcastle in Australia. In 2021, Ray coauthored a examine inspecting whether or not children who grew up with gadgets possessed the identical positive motor abilities as children who didn’t. Whereas these college students met the anticipated efficiency ranges on guide dexterity exams, their general motor proficiency was decrease than earlier norms. Finally, the researchers hypothesized, time spent holding gadgets relatively than pencils may be impacting whether or not children had all of the motor abilities they wanted to study handwriting after they entered kindergarten.
But when children all the time have entry to gadgets, does it actually matter whether or not they can write with their arms? Sure and no. If the previous few years of digital nomad work and vibe coding have taught us something it’s that, professionally, handwriting will not be all that vital in quite a lot of fields. The issue is that studying handwriting may be essential to study the whole lot else. “We don’t but know what we’re dropping when it comes to literacy acquisition by de-emphasizing handwriting fluency,” Ray says.
Among the many half-dozen specialists I spoke to for this piece, there have been variations in opinion on whether or not ethical panics over writing instruction had been warranted. For instance, in lots of states lawmakers have handed laws to guarantee children study cursive in US public faculties. Some specialists help this, however many don’t suppose studying cursive, particularly, is all that essential. However almost all agree that realizing the way to write has cognitive advantages. It helps college students study to learn, and likelihood is if they’ve to consider one thing lengthy sufficient to write down it down, they’ll keep in mind it extra completely than if it’s typed.
“Handwriting itself actually does matter,” says Robert Wiley, a psychology professor on the College of North Carolina at Greensboro whose analysis focuses on how the mind processes written language. “Not in an absolute sense; folks aren’t going to be illiterate. However will some kids have a more durable time studying as a result of they’re lacking that observe? Sure.”
