5 ms·

Stop Teaching Handwriting

28 points by robg 18y ago

maurycy 18y ago
I completely do not agree. I use a keyboard since 10, and I write faster than most people, yet I have a fountain pen and maintain all my personal notes in a Moleskine. It is hard to me to rationalize it but handwriting enables me to focus entirely on my thoughts, without any distractions, wherver I am. I stumbled upon my best ideas while handwriting. Personally I even believe that people should be taught calligraphy. It does not make any direct sense but in our attention economy, with constant distractions, it is good to be disconnected for a while.
- serhei 18y ago
  I also think some calligraphy work in school would be a great idea; not so much because it improves your handwriting, but rather because it teaches you to concentrate on what you're doing at the moment.
  - maurycy 18y ago
    This is a great point and, to be honest, the real reason why it makes sense to learn handwriting, reading paper books or mathematics. Focus is one of our most important assets and without ability to focus it is hard to accomplish anything.
- IsaacSchlueter 18y ago
  So, you need to be able to write with a pen so that you can read it. I can read my handwriting just fine. And, my chickenscratch is easier to write at a higher speed, so my ideas are less choked. It makes sense to teach the arts. But requiring traditional penmanship as a measure of writing ability is absurd.
megatron 18y ago
This is ridiculous. TFA claims that we shouldn't teach handwriting because her son struggles and makes claims that an author used a typewriter in the 1880s because they probably shared the same problem with nothing to back it up. Sure, nobody 'needs' handwriting when they're in front of a computer keyboard but its a lot easier when you're outdoors and need to write a quick note down (and no, T9 is not the answer), especially given that paper doesn't disappear when it loses charge.
- robg 18y ago
  Why assume that handwriting wouldn't be learned if it's not taught? How many of us took typing classes?
  - orib 18y ago
    Because there are relatively poor alternatives to it. Think of it this way -- if people were used to T9 interfaces on phones, and you had a T9 pad for a computer, then most programmers would be entering their code using T9 because it's harder to learn to type properly.
maxwell 18y ago
Just because we have calculators doesn't mean we should stop teaching mental math. Same goes for keyboards/handwriting. On the other hand, "show your work" and cursive do seem archaic, and probably could be dumped.
tialys 18y ago
I'm 18 years old, and I live and die on my computer day in and day out. And yet, for all of my college classes I take notes with pen and paper. It's insane to think that a child would be able to get by in school without decent handwriting skills. Maybe in 20 years, but certainly not yet. That said, the asinine emphasis on 'cursive' handwriting I got for two years makes me cringe every time I think about it. That time could have been much better spent on things that I might actually use in real life.
- robg 18y ago
  Define: "decent handwriting skills". For instance, if I never learned how to write a G "correctly", I could still take notes and do just fine in the rest of my life. Teaching that "skill" is a waste of time. Handwriting learned on your own would be good enough for your purposes. Communcations with other people today requires a separate set of skills - typing, writing, speaking, even debating - that aren't taught enough. Instruction in handwriting is a waste of precious time - developmentally and socially - when there are better alternatives.
  - omouse 18y ago
    This is stupid. There is a correct way to write a G. That's how the alphabet looks. Yes you can stylize it but it has to generally fit the mold of the G. If you were using a different alphabet, you would have to learn how to write the letters/symbols of it. You are arguing against teaching people the alphabet basically.
    - robg 18y ago
      No, I'm against wasting public resources on marginalized skills while teaching kids that learning is about boring you to death. How many of us have sloppy handwriting and after how many hours of us being "taught"? Handwriting today is much more often for personal use. My handwriting is good enough if I can read it. Teach typing instead. The child will learn a much more useful skill and with many more applications. They'll pick up handwriting as necessary (just as they do typing now). Invert the priorities.
wheels 18y ago
Handwriting has been a tool of the educated for several millennia, I doubt it will so quickly fade into irrelevance. The author of this post has some relevant points, but extends too far. Handwriting's role is changing, and will be less relevant over time, but there is and has since the beginning of literacy been a difference between reproducing texts and taking notes. The former is already irrelevant (and is the part of the author's point I agree with). The latter won't be for some time. And what I consider just as critical, is the basic ability to sketch. On a blackboard. On a notepad. On a napkin. Sometimes I need to express ideas visually in a way that technology hasn't caught up with to allow me to do as versatilely as I can with good old writing utensils.
subwindow 18y ago
I think the perils in this come in teachers forcing every kid to write perfectly, regardless of any impairments they might have. I have dyslexic dysgraphia, which literally prevents me from writing neatly. It sounds like this guy's kid has something similar. Teachers who teach handwriting should be trained to diagnose something like this and help the kids along not by telling the kids that their penmanship is awful, but by teaching them new grips or ways to get around their lack of fine motor control.
michael_dorfman 18y ago
This was, without a doubt, one of the dumbest articles I've read on HN in a long time. I wish I had better handwriting, and I don't think I've ever met anyone who wish they wrote less clearly.
- whacked_new 18y ago
  Agreed! A third grade kid who confuses the direction of the hook of a 'G' when writing it himself does not indicate that writing is obsolete. It indicates a failure of parenting. Now I wonder if this sort of article should be tolerated simply because it generates discussion...
  - queensnake 18y ago
    He might be dyslexic or something. She's got a point.
    - michael_dorfman 18y ago
      He's dyslexic, therefore schools shouldn't teach handwriting? Care to fill out the missing steps in the syllogism, to make the "point" you think she's got?
    - whacked_new 18y ago
      I did consider the case of being dyslexic, in which case he wouldn't just have a problem with handwriting, but also with reading and writing in general, regardless of medium. At the age of 8 or 9, you'd expect the kid to already have it diagnosed and actions taken. But you made me re-read the article (actually the middle three paragraphs, which I skipped because the intro and final paragraphs weren't interesting). Fair enough -- she has a point. It could be about cursive, stupid teachers, bad curricula, schooling, or just handwriting in general. Not sure which, and that the title is incendiary and that she stated her profession in the intro just doesn't do it for me. I admit my comment was untamed though.
      - timcederman 18y ago
smanek 18y ago
It's almost impossible to take notes in math with a computer too. I tried writing all my notes in LaTeX for a semester, but I'd waste so much time/energy worrying about typesetting that I didn't pay enough attention in class. That being said, I'd recommend everyone should try to take notes in LaTeX for a month or two. If nothing else, it makes you fluent very quickly (a skill any computer scientist/mathematician worth their salt will need eventually anyways). Also, a student writing his G's backwards isn't a fine motor problem - it seems more like a memory/symbol disassociation thing (much more serious). Writing sloppily or in large print is a fine motor problem. Writing backwards isn't.
- scott_s 18y ago
  My handwriting is awful, but the moment I switch to writing math, it becomes clear. I think the reason is that my handwriting is bad not because I'm incapable of writing clearly, but that I'm incapable of writing clearly at the speed I want. I can write clearly if I slow down. When I write out math, each symbol means more. I don't have to write as fast, and getting the exact symbol correctly means more, so it's slow and clear.
- newt0311 18y ago
  Hmm... I take all my notes in LaTeX as well. For me, I found that it was more a matter of having the correct macros than any inherent slowness in the LaTeX type setting system. My preamble grew to about 130 lines before I was really able to type effectively in class. However, the benefits of this approach are undeniable. It halped me become good at LaTeX but more than that it made my notes easy to archive, retrieve, share, and use in general. Referring back to old theorems is a lot faster when you have Ctrl-F at your disposal. The key is that if you write a similar thing more that ~3 times, make an emacs abbrev for it or a latex macro for it.
- jacobolus 18y ago
  I had a classmate who could with no problem TeX notes in Harvard’s Math 55 (a course with notes which went up on a chalkboard so fast I could barely keep up writing them by hand), including drawing commutative diagrams, etc. It’s just a matter of experience and a bevy of personally defined macros for common bits. “Almost impossible” is a great overstatement.
pavelludiq 18y ago
My handwriting is awful. I avoid it if i can, but its a bad idea to not teach kids handwriting.
robg 18y ago
Not teaching handwriting doesn't mean no handwriting. It would just decrease the emphasis. Besides, I'd rather see touch typing classes from a young age. Why not simply replace one with the the other? Just as typing is often learned with no formal education, so would handwriting be. Just invert the emphasis. Even then, by the end of our lives if not sooner, speech recognition (and without overt vocalization) will probably make typing obsolete.
vaksel 18y ago
It still needs to be taught, but noone should ever be penalized at school for writing chicken scratch.
Paperflyer 18y ago
I recently got a letter that was written in a really artful, beautiful handwriting. It was pure joy, reading this work of art. It would have been beautiful even if the words didn't make any sense. I wish I could write even remotely as beautifully... Banning handwriting would be a terrible loss.
jmcannon 18y ago
This woman seems to think that sacrificing the pen for the keyboard somehow makes us a more evolved or sophisticated brand of human. But when I picture a room full of Americans than can't even scribble their own names on an application form, I get exactly the opposite impression.
- cstejerean 18y ago
  If you learn how to read you'll know how to write good enough. All it takes is to replicate the shapes of the letters you read (and how I learned to write in print since we were only taught cursive).
  - tjpick 18y ago
    That's a strange argument. Learning to do something is going from seeing it being done, to doing it. Seeing the raw material, seeing the end product (either in you mind or in the world) and being able to use the raw material in the right way to produce something useful. That is the hard bit - knowing how to control things to get the desired result. All it takes to play the piano is to replicate the sounds of a tune you hear. All it takes to paint a good observational painting is to smoosh some colours on a paper to match what you see. It just doesn't work that way.
    - cstejerean 18y ago
      It depends on how much time you're willing to invest in it.
rml 18y ago
As someone who has tutored a number of dyslexic young people, I have seen this pattern repeat itself over and over. The teachers at most schools just don't get it. They seem to think that trying to manipulate children emotionally with "interventions" and the like will magically fix their awkward/sloppy/inverted handwriting (letter inversion, as others here may have mentioned, is a classic dyslexia symptom). It's cruel and unnecessary, and reflects a lack of competence. Having said that, I mostly disagree with this writer, though I understand her reaction as a parent. In the course of my training, I was told that handwriting, and cursive handwriting in particular, are important to learn because when done correctly, they reinforce the brain's neural pathways associated with particular letters and sounds (1). For example, we had students stand at a whiteboard and write large cursive letters while reading/saying them at the same time (2). The acronym was V.A.K.: Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic. The idea was to associate lots of information (from the eyes, ears and muscles) in the brain with the different letters and their sounds. Of course, most schools don't do that, so the lesson of this article seems to be this: teaching handwriting to kids is bad for them if you're doing it wrong. (1) I'm not a neurologist, so this might be the wrong way to describe it. (2) The students worked one-on-one in private rooms with tutors that they trusted, NEVER in open classrooms. This is an important point. (edited for formatting)
- robg 18y ago
  I appreciate your perspective. I am a neuroscientist, and this subject closely rubs up against my training. I see nothing in handwriting that typing doesn't also give the developing brain. If anything, typing, especially touch, seems to require more fine motor skills than handwriting. And with the possibility of computer games to help teach typing, and coincident with auditory (hear 's' versus 'sh' versus 'sp') feedback (which helps normal and atypical reading development), you could teach typing, reading, writing, and spelling in one well-designed program while providing different types of focused feedback. Handwriting not only has less real world utility, but it is also harder to learn while being a more solitary skill. The more I think about it the more I'm verging on outrage that so much emphasis is still given to handwriting over typing.
newt0311 18y ago
In the spirit of this article, I have found a number of other things which are no longer needed in the school curriculum and serve only to stress incoming student. 1. Writing (already mentioned): Seriously, hard stuff and obsoleted by keyboards. 2. Reading: reading is hard, you need to know hundreds of thousands if not millions of words and exactly what they look like. Obsoleted by screen readers. 3. Arithmetic: Boring, terminally boring, requires memorization of multiple tables or an understanding of the very basic concepts behind it and makes people hate maths. Obsoleted by computers. 4. Algebra: Not terribly difficult (unless you are a math major) and nobody really uses it. Besides, we have mathematica. 5. Calculus: See point 4. 6. Mathematics: See point 5. 7. History: Long, hard, requires memorizing information on so many dead people. What is the point. Obsoleted by books (or audiotapes as the need arises). 8. Science: Seriously, have you seen physics. Soooo hard. Obsoleted by computers. 9. Schools: After points 1-8 what does this do anymore? 10. Thinking: Oops. Still waiting for MIT.
- derefr 18y ago
  There could be school without any of that stuff, and still be useful: philosophy, ethics, comparative religion, psychology (personal and social), logic and rhetoric, and perhaps an extra language or four.... Teaching should start with the "why" of life, not the "how." I mean, you can throw science and history courses in there, but they're really just "here's a bunch of facts that came from the past that you must regurgitate", so their value in enabling clear thought is low (unless, with science, you actually started by teaching the scientific method, then required students to verify anything that was taught using redundant, double-blind experiments...)
- thorax 18y ago
  While I don't agree with the article, it's not 100% fair to compare the requirement of this motor (or communications) skill with all those unrelated studies of human knowledge.
petercooper 18y ago
There is a difference between "handwriting" and "writing" and it is certainly true that there is an overemphasis on handwriting - to the severe detriment of writing skills. Being able "to write" (as in, put thoughts and ideas together as words) is much more important than being able to write (as in handwriting), yet schools do tend to focus significantly on the latter. It's important to know how to write by hand, but it should not be considered even vaguely superior to the art of communicating or "writing".
jrockway 18y ago
I think a lot of posters are missing the fact that the author is complaining about cursive writing, not printing. Of course kids need to learn to print. But the result doesn't need to be beautiful, flowing, and elegant; it just needs to be legible. Let's spend our time making the letters that they write useful, not beautiful. When I was in elementary school, I routinely lost points on assignments because I chose to print instead of writing in cursive. (I also lost points for using a pencil instead of pen. Apparently I should correct my errors by rewriting an entire essay, not by erasing. What the fuck!?) Even at the age of 7, I considered this silly and realized that the public school system was a waste. I was right.
- bmj 18y ago
  There is actually a movement among homeschoolers to avoid cursive until much later in the learning process. We'll probably such a routine with our kids (and we'll probably have them typing at an early age, too). I had a very similar experience in school as well. Once I was through with cursive, I never wrote that way again (my signature is chicken scratch). I do, however, still pick up a pen and paper every day, if only to write in my journal.
orib 18y ago
Sorry, but this is inane. Just because your son sucks at writing doesn't mean that the pen is obsolete. Paper isn't going anywhere. It's still the simplest, cheapest, and most robust of recording information on the fly, and nothing on the horizon is going to change that; Legible writing will continue to be useful for the forseeable future, even if it isn't used for long manuscripts anymore. I agree that the emphasis on pretty curisve forms isn't that important -- hell, I've almost forgotten how -- but legible writing is still very important.
raema 18y ago
Might as well not learn to read either. While we're at it learning words is hard, lets cut about half of them out. I could replace half the words I use with grunts and get by just fine.
noonespecial 18y ago
Strong Disagree Making marks and symbols with our hands that other people can read is something uniquely human. Should we not speak because we can text as well? To write, to read, and to speak are the foundations of human evolution. Technology augments these natural gifts, not replaces them.
hugh 18y ago
A lot of comments already, but I'll just make two points: 1. I suspect that a lot of what's being trained in handwriting classes is not just the ability to make legible versions of the 26 letters of the English alphabet, but rather general skills of hand positioning and fine motor control. Kids need to pick these skills up one way or another. 2. Regardless of whether you can "take notes" with a keyboard just as well as you can with a pen and pad, I'm pretty sure it's damn near impossible to do complicated mathematics without a pen and pad. Or a blackboard.
- DabAsteroid 18y ago
  I'm pretty sure it's damn near impossible to do complicated mathematics without a pen and pad. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=295110 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=295110 I [Thad Starner] get much more down than anybody writing on pen and paper, because you can write, at maximum, about 25 words per minute. I can type 70. So I am much more complete in my notes. I also type LaTeX math notation. So that means if you have something highly technical, you will get book-quality-formatted notes out of me.
  - hugh 18y ago
    I'm talking about doing mathematics, not just taking down the notation. Sure, I can type LaTeX too, but once I've typed an equation it still looks like a mess. The structure isn't obvious. It's not intuitively obvious how to eliminate some terms and rearrange it, the way it would be if I were writing it down longhand.
    - DabAsteroid 18y ago
      Would I be correct in supposing that you tried Mathematica?
Maascamp 18y ago
How many people in this world can afford a computer to learn to type on? Along that vein, how many schools in the US can afford to equip each student with a full time computer (since they won't be able to write notes down)? Get grounded in reality. Writing will be taught for a long time to come, and rightfully so.
AndyKelley 18y ago
While we're at it, we should switch all the keyboard layouts to Dvorak.
sh1mmer 18y ago
While I don't quite disagree with this article, I think a lot of people have raised that handwriting is a useful skill in a lot of places that require a low-tech solution to communication. While it is technically possible to get by without it there are a lot of places which currently don't have an easily implementable high-tech solution (such as leaving a note on the fridge for your flat mate). It sounds to me like the author's child could be dyslexic or dyspraxic (I'm dyslexic) and could use some extra help. The extra help I got in school helped me mostly with the mechanics of writing, spelling and grammar rather than thinking issues. But, that was what I needed. I think maybe she should be complaining more about her son's teacher's attitude than some emphasis on writing at school.

28 points by robg 18y ago

I completely do not agree. I use a keyboard since 10, and I write faster than most people, yet I have a fountain pen and maintain all my personal notes in a Moleskine. It is hard to me to rationalize it but handwriting enables me to focus entirely on my thoughts, without any distractions, wherver I am. I stumbled upon my best ideas while handwriting. Personally I even believe that people should be taught calligraphy. It does not make any direct sense but in our attention economy, with constant distractions, it is good to be disconnected for a while.

serhei 18y ago
I also think some calligraphy work in school would be a great idea; not so much because it improves your handwriting, but rather because it teaches you to concentrate on what you're doing at the moment.
- maurycy 18y ago
  This is a great point and, to be honest, the real reason why it makes sense to learn handwriting, reading paper books or mathematics. Focus is one of our most important assets and without ability to focus it is hard to accomplish anything.
IsaacSchlueter 18y ago
So, you need to be able to write with a pen so that you can read it. I can read my handwriting just fine. And, my chickenscratch is easier to write at a higher speed, so my ideas are less choked. It makes sense to teach the arts. But requiring traditional penmanship as a measure of writing ability is absurd.

megatron 18y ago

This is ridiculous. TFA claims that we shouldn't teach handwriting because her son struggles and makes claims that an author used a typewriter in the 1880s because they probably shared the same problem with nothing to back it up. Sure, nobody 'needs' handwriting when they're in front of a computer keyboard but its a lot easier when you're outdoors and need to write a quick note down (and no, T9 is not the answer), especially given that paper doesn't disappear when it loses charge.

robg 18y ago
Why assume that handwriting wouldn't be learned if it's not taught? How many of us took typing classes?
- orib 18y ago
  Because there are relatively poor alternatives to it. Think of it this way -- if people were used to T9 interfaces on phones, and you had a T9 pad for a computer, then most programmers would be entering their code using T9 because it's harder to learn to type properly.

maxwell 18y ago

Just because we have calculators doesn't mean we should stop teaching mental math. Same goes for keyboards/handwriting. On the other hand, "show your work" and cursive do seem archaic, and probably could be dumped.

tialys 18y ago

I'm 18 years old, and I live and die on my computer day in and day out. And yet, for all of my college classes I take notes with pen and paper. It's insane to think that a child would be able to get by in school without decent handwriting skills. Maybe in 20 years, but certainly not yet. That said, the asinine emphasis on 'cursive' handwriting I got for two years makes me cringe every time I think about it. That time could have been much better spent on things that I might actually use in real life.

robg 18y ago
Define: "decent handwriting skills". For instance, if I never learned how to write a G "correctly", I could still take notes and do just fine in the rest of my life. Teaching that "skill" is a waste of time. Handwriting learned on your own would be good enough for your purposes. Communcations with other people today requires a separate set of skills - typing, writing, speaking, even debating - that aren't taught enough. Instruction in handwriting is a waste of precious time - developmentally and socially - when there are better alternatives.
- omouse 18y ago
  This is stupid. There is a correct way to write a G. That's how the alphabet looks. Yes you can stylize it but it has to generally fit the mold of the G. If you were using a different alphabet, you would have to learn how to write the letters/symbols of it. You are arguing against teaching people the alphabet basically.
  - robg 18y ago
    No, I'm against wasting public resources on marginalized skills while teaching kids that learning is about boring you to death. How many of us have sloppy handwriting and after how many hours of us being "taught"? Handwriting today is much more often for personal use. My handwriting is good enough if I can read it. Teach typing instead. The child will learn a much more useful skill and with many more applications. They'll pick up handwriting as necessary (just as they do typing now). Invert the priorities.

wheels 18y ago

Handwriting has been a tool of the educated for several millennia, I doubt it will so quickly fade into irrelevance. The author of this post has some relevant points, but extends too far. Handwriting's role is changing, and will be less relevant over time, but there is and has since the beginning of literacy been a difference between reproducing texts and taking notes. The former is already irrelevant (and is the part of the author's point I agree with). The latter won't be for some time. And what I consider just as critical, is the basic ability to sketch. On a blackboard. On a notepad. On a napkin. Sometimes I need to express ideas visually in a way that technology hasn't caught up with to allow me to do as versatilely as I can with good old writing utensils.

subwindow 18y ago

I think the perils in this come in teachers forcing every kid to write perfectly, regardless of any impairments they might have. I have dyslexic dysgraphia, which literally prevents me from writing neatly. It sounds like this guy's kid has something similar. Teachers who teach handwriting should be trained to diagnose something like this and help the kids along not by telling the kids that their penmanship is awful, but by teaching them new grips or ways to get around their lack of fine motor control.

michael_dorfman 18y ago

This was, without a doubt, one of the dumbest articles I've read on HN in a long time. I wish I had better handwriting, and I don't think I've ever met anyone who wish they wrote less clearly.

whacked_new 18y ago
Agreed! A third grade kid who confuses the direction of the hook of a 'G' when writing it himself does not indicate that writing is obsolete. It indicates a failure of parenting. Now I wonder if this sort of article should be tolerated simply because it generates discussion...
- queensnake 18y ago
  He might be dyslexic or something. She's got a point.
  - michael_dorfman 18y ago
    He's dyslexic, therefore schools shouldn't teach handwriting? Care to fill out the missing steps in the syllogism, to make the "point" you think she's got?
  - whacked_new 18y ago
    I did consider the case of being dyslexic, in which case he wouldn't just have a problem with handwriting, but also with reading and writing in general, regardless of medium. At the age of 8 or 9, you'd expect the kid to already have it diagnosed and actions taken. But you made me re-read the article (actually the middle three paragraphs, which I skipped because the intro and final paragraphs weren't interesting). Fair enough -- she has a point. It could be about cursive, stupid teachers, bad curricula, schooling, or just handwriting in general. Not sure which, and that the title is incendiary and that she stated her profession in the intro just doesn't do it for me. I admit my comment was untamed though.
    - timcederman 18y ago

smanek 18y ago

It's almost impossible to take notes in math with a computer too. I tried writing all my notes in LaTeX for a semester, but I'd waste so much time/energy worrying about typesetting that I didn't pay enough attention in class. That being said, I'd recommend everyone should try to take notes in LaTeX for a month or two. If nothing else, it makes you fluent very quickly (a skill any computer scientist/mathematician worth their salt will need eventually anyways). Also, a student writing his G's backwards isn't a fine motor problem - it seems more like a memory/symbol disassociation thing (much more serious). Writing sloppily or in large print is a fine motor problem. Writing backwards isn't.

scott_s 18y ago
My handwriting is awful, but the moment I switch to writing math, it becomes clear. I think the reason is that my handwriting is bad not because I'm incapable of writing clearly, but that I'm incapable of writing clearly at the speed I want. I can write clearly if I slow down. When I write out math, each symbol means more. I don't have to write as fast, and getting the exact symbol correctly means more, so it's slow and clear.
newt0311 18y ago
Hmm... I take all my notes in LaTeX as well. For me, I found that it was more a matter of having the correct macros than any inherent slowness in the LaTeX type setting system. My preamble grew to about 130 lines before I was really able to type effectively in class. However, the benefits of this approach are undeniable. It halped me become good at LaTeX but more than that it made my notes easy to archive, retrieve, share, and use in general. Referring back to old theorems is a lot faster when you have Ctrl-F at your disposal. The key is that if you write a similar thing more that ~3 times, make an emacs abbrev for it or a latex macro for it.
jacobolus 18y ago
I had a classmate who could with no problem TeX notes in Harvard’s Math 55 (a course with notes which went up on a chalkboard so fast I could barely keep up writing them by hand), including drawing commutative diagrams, etc. It’s just a matter of experience and a bevy of personally defined macros for common bits. “Almost impossible” is a great overstatement.

pavelludiq 18y ago

My handwriting is awful. I avoid it if i can, but its a bad idea to not teach kids handwriting.

robg 18y ago

Not teaching handwriting doesn't mean no handwriting. It would just decrease the emphasis. Besides, I'd rather see touch typing classes from a young age. Why not simply replace one with the the other? Just as typing is often learned with no formal education, so would handwriting be. Just invert the emphasis. Even then, by the end of our lives if not sooner, speech recognition (and without overt vocalization) will probably make typing obsolete.

vaksel 18y ago

It still needs to be taught, but noone should ever be penalized at school for writing chicken scratch.

Paperflyer 18y ago

I recently got a letter that was written in a really artful, beautiful handwriting. It was pure joy, reading this work of art. It would have been beautiful even if the words didn't make any sense. I wish I could write even remotely as beautifully... Banning handwriting would be a terrible loss.

jmcannon 18y ago

This woman seems to think that sacrificing the pen for the keyboard somehow makes us a more evolved or sophisticated brand of human. But when I picture a room full of Americans than can't even scribble their own names on an application form, I get exactly the opposite impression.

cstejerean 18y ago
If you learn how to read you'll know how to write good enough. All it takes is to replicate the shapes of the letters you read (and how I learned to write in print since we were only taught cursive).
- tjpick 18y ago
  That's a strange argument. Learning to do something is going from seeing it being done, to doing it. Seeing the raw material, seeing the end product (either in you mind or in the world) and being able to use the raw material in the right way to produce something useful. That is the hard bit - knowing how to control things to get the desired result. All it takes to play the piano is to replicate the sounds of a tune you hear. All it takes to paint a good observational painting is to smoosh some colours on a paper to match what you see. It just doesn't work that way.
  - cstejerean 18y ago
    It depends on how much time you're willing to invest in it.

rml 18y ago

As someone who has tutored a number of dyslexic young people, I have seen this pattern repeat itself over and over. The teachers at most schools just don't get it. They seem to think that trying to manipulate children emotionally with "interventions" and the like will magically fix their awkward/sloppy/inverted handwriting (letter inversion, as others here may have mentioned, is a classic dyslexia symptom). It's cruel and unnecessary, and reflects a lack of competence. Having said that, I mostly disagree with this writer, though I understand her reaction as a parent. In the course of my training, I was told that handwriting, and cursive handwriting in particular, are important to learn because when done correctly, they reinforce the brain's neural pathways associated with particular letters and sounds (1). For example, we had students stand at a whiteboard and write large cursive letters while reading/saying them at the same time (2). The acronym was V.A.K.: Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic. The idea was to associate lots of information (from the eyes, ears and muscles) in the brain with the different letters and their sounds. Of course, most schools don't do that, so the lesson of this article seems to be this: teaching handwriting to kids is bad for them if you're doing it wrong. (1) I'm not a neurologist, so this might be the wrong way to describe it. (2) The students worked one-on-one in private rooms with tutors that they trusted, NEVER in open classrooms. This is an important point. (edited for formatting)

robg 18y ago
I appreciate your perspective. I am a neuroscientist, and this subject closely rubs up against my training. I see nothing in handwriting that typing doesn't also give the developing brain. If anything, typing, especially touch, seems to require more fine motor skills than handwriting. And with the possibility of computer games to help teach typing, and coincident with auditory (hear 's' versus 'sh' versus 'sp') feedback (which helps normal and atypical reading development), you could teach typing, reading, writing, and spelling in one well-designed program while providing different types of focused feedback. Handwriting not only has less real world utility, but it is also harder to learn while being a more solitary skill. The more I think about it the more I'm verging on outrage that so much emphasis is still given to handwriting over typing.

newt0311 18y ago

In the spirit of this article, I have found a number of other things which are no longer needed in the school curriculum and serve only to stress incoming student. 1. Writing (already mentioned): Seriously, hard stuff and obsoleted by keyboards. 2. Reading: reading is hard, you need to know hundreds of thousands if not millions of words and exactly what they look like. Obsoleted by screen readers. 3. Arithmetic: Boring, terminally boring, requires memorization of multiple tables or an understanding of the very basic concepts behind it and makes people hate maths. Obsoleted by computers. 4. Algebra: Not terribly difficult (unless you are a math major) and nobody really uses it. Besides, we have mathematica. 5. Calculus: See point 4. 6. Mathematics: See point 5. 7. History: Long, hard, requires memorizing information on so many dead people. What is the point. Obsoleted by books (or audiotapes as the need arises). 8. Science: Seriously, have you seen physics. Soooo hard. Obsoleted by computers. 9. Schools: After points 1-8 what does this do anymore? 10. Thinking: Oops. Still waiting for MIT.

derefr 18y ago
There could be school without any of that stuff, and still be useful: philosophy, ethics, comparative religion, psychology (personal and social), logic and rhetoric, and perhaps an extra language or four.... Teaching should start with the "why" of life, not the "how." I mean, you can throw science and history courses in there, but they're really just "here's a bunch of facts that came from the past that you must regurgitate", so their value in enabling clear thought is low (unless, with science, you actually started by teaching the scientific method, then required students to verify anything that was taught using redundant, double-blind experiments...)
thorax 18y ago
While I don't agree with the article, it's not 100% fair to compare the requirement of this motor (or communications) skill with all those unrelated studies of human knowledge.

petercooper 18y ago

There is a difference between "handwriting" and "writing" and it is certainly true that there is an overemphasis on handwriting - to the severe detriment of writing skills. Being able "to write" (as in, put thoughts and ideas together as words) is much more important than being able to write (as in handwriting), yet schools do tend to focus significantly on the latter. It's important to know how to write by hand, but it should not be considered even vaguely superior to the art of communicating or "writing".

jrockway 18y ago

I think a lot of posters are missing the fact that the author is complaining about cursive writing, not printing. Of course kids need to learn to print. But the result doesn't need to be beautiful, flowing, and elegant; it just needs to be legible. Let's spend our time making the letters that they write useful, not beautiful. When I was in elementary school, I routinely lost points on assignments because I chose to print instead of writing in cursive. (I also lost points for using a pencil instead of pen. Apparently I should correct my errors by rewriting an entire essay, not by erasing. What the fuck!?) Even at the age of 7, I considered this silly and realized that the public school system was a waste. I was right.

bmj 18y ago
There is actually a movement among homeschoolers to avoid cursive until much later in the learning process. We'll probably such a routine with our kids (and we'll probably have them typing at an early age, too). I had a very similar experience in school as well. Once I was through with cursive, I never wrote that way again (my signature is chicken scratch). I do, however, still pick up a pen and paper every day, if only to write in my journal.

orib 18y ago

Sorry, but this is inane. Just because your son sucks at writing doesn't mean that the pen is obsolete. Paper isn't going anywhere. It's still the simplest, cheapest, and most robust of recording information on the fly, and nothing on the horizon is going to change that; Legible writing will continue to be useful for the forseeable future, even if it isn't used for long manuscripts anymore. I agree that the emphasis on pretty curisve forms isn't that important -- hell, I've almost forgotten how -- but legible writing is still very important.

raema 18y ago

Might as well not learn to read either. While we're at it learning words is hard, lets cut about half of them out. I could replace half the words I use with grunts and get by just fine.

noonespecial 18y ago

Strong Disagree Making marks and symbols with our hands that other people can read is something uniquely human. Should we not speak because we can text as well? To write, to read, and to speak are the foundations of human evolution. Technology augments these natural gifts, not replaces them.

hugh 18y ago

A lot of comments already, but I'll just make two points: 1. I suspect that a lot of what's being trained in handwriting classes is not just the ability to make legible versions of the 26 letters of the English alphabet, but rather general skills of hand positioning and fine motor control. Kids need to pick these skills up one way or another. 2. Regardless of whether you can "take notes" with a keyboard just as well as you can with a pen and pad, I'm pretty sure it's damn near impossible to do complicated mathematics without a pen and pad. Or a blackboard.

DabAsteroid 18y ago
I'm pretty sure it's damn near impossible to do complicated mathematics without a pen and pad. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=295110 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=295110 I [Thad Starner] get much more down than anybody writing on pen and paper, because you can write, at maximum, about 25 words per minute. I can type 70. So I am much more complete in my notes. I also type LaTeX math notation. So that means if you have something highly technical, you will get book-quality-formatted notes out of me.
- hugh 18y ago
  I'm talking about doing mathematics, not just taking down the notation. Sure, I can type LaTeX too, but once I've typed an equation it still looks like a mess. The structure isn't obvious. It's not intuitively obvious how to eliminate some terms and rearrange it, the way it would be if I were writing it down longhand.
  - DabAsteroid 18y ago
    Would I be correct in supposing that you tried Mathematica?

Maascamp 18y ago

How many people in this world can afford a computer to learn to type on? Along that vein, how many schools in the US can afford to equip each student with a full time computer (since they won't be able to write notes down)? Get grounded in reality. Writing will be taught for a long time to come, and rightfully so.

AndyKelley 18y ago

While we're at it, we should switch all the keyboard layouts to Dvorak.

sh1mmer 18y ago

While I don't quite disagree with this article, I think a lot of people have raised that handwriting is a useful skill in a lot of places that require a low-tech solution to communication. While it is technically possible to get by without it there are a lot of places which currently don't have an easily implementable high-tech solution (such as leaving a note on the fridge for your flat mate). It sounds to me like the author's child could be dyslexic or dyspraxic (I'm dyslexic) and could use some extra help. The extra help I got in school helped me mostly with the mechanics of writing, spelling and grammar rather than thinking issues. But, that was what I needed. I think maybe she should be complaining more about her son's teacher's attitude than some emphasis on writing at school.