Does Anyone Have a Pen and Paper?
Now that we are done our letters from one of my recent blogs, it may be a good time to see if your handwriting says anything about your intelligence. According to this article How writing by hand makes kids smarter, the lack of writing using a pen and pencil might actually make us less smart, at least for kids. But what is good for the goose is probably apropos to the gander, so does writing on a keyboard make the written language less rich and use less of our brains?
This article is ridiculous, except perhaps that we do judge people on their handwriting (see SAT scores, college hopefuls). Handwriting is a signature and reveals as much about the writer as their clothing or speech. With all the problems in the world, to argue if it is better to make kids write on keyboard vs. pen has to be one of the least significant battles. First, the article quotes a study that actually gave children MRIs to see the brain activity difference between the students that studied the written characters vs. the keyboard characters. I am all for science, but exposing children to radiation to prove a point, even if the findings were lucid, makes me feel dirty. We really should be using federal tax money for more humane and serious excursions, like finding a cure for cancer.
The article suggests that this is a world phenomenon. I would think with the ubiquity of keyboards and computers, the purpose of pens, pencils and papers are becoming extinct. The keyboard has helped communication and it is a vehicle to democracy by allowing more people to have a voice, regardless of a D in poor penmanship. It may not be optimal for the writer’s mind in writing, but it has made reading a whole lot easier. What the article suggests is a return to teaching penmanship, especially in the younger minds, because it compels more coherent and dynamic writing. The keyboard causes us to rush our thoughts and neglect the tedious process of creating compositions.
The article’s anti-technology and anti-green sentiments are refreshing but also idiotic. The art of penmanship has gone out the same door as the art of education. The science of writing is about communication of ideas that are more important than just a verbal response. The very act of writing triggers more brain activity than a heated argument because of the process of aligning characters that have similar characteristics as our thoughts. The goal for a writer is to get the characters or letters’ meaning as close as possible to the thoughts that were compelled by their emotions. Whether the writing is done on keyboard or by pencil doesn’t make the process any easier for some or harder for others. The idea that our brains are stimulated by the movement of the hand over the tap of the key is ridiculous.
For writing to really be effective, you must revise. If the basis for learning penmanship is that we will sometime in the future have to type it out, then the writing will be better. But I am pretty sure the next experiment will be that kids who write with pens are less smart than those who write with pencils. As a colleague said at the lunch table today, “Most doctors and scientists, including Einstein, had the most putrid of handwritings.” Then I rebuked him for saying putrid while I was eating a tuna sandwich.
The case stands that teaching children to write without too much technology is important. Will it help with their hand and eye coordination? Probably as much as any video game or iPad would. Children should be exposed to a world without screens as much as they should be exposed to them. Writing is a laborious process of thought replication for a purpose, and not an aesthetic dance of pen or paper, as halcyon as that idea might be. Learning to write is important today because the skill is still required in society since computers have not taken over everything. But as generations come who have only seen and read the characters on a screen, the ability to retain penmanship characters as well as the ability to differentiate individual styles of penmanship, will be as important as the VCR recorder.
Final thoughts would leave me to suggest that all that handwritten stuff you have waiting to be typed needs to get done. No one will soon know how to decipher it, let alone read or write it. Penmanship has its merits as I wrote in Is the Writing on the Wall for Cursive?, but it has little to do with the process of writing other than a vehicle, a pretty one at that, but a horse compared to the car that is the keyboard. In fact, next month I plan a blog to lament the keyboard just in time for the new updated voice recognition software.
Computers, IPAD, New York Times, Penmanship, SAT, This Week, Writing, education 
Reader Comments (6)
I must disagree with you - not about the aesthetic purpose of penmanship, but about the connection between the manual process of creating letters and learning. I think because we have no real control group of children yet who have not learn to hand write, it is not possible to judge its relevance. I have fought with my seven-year-old daughter's school district for three years for occupational therapy. She has a weak pencil grasp and has difficulty forming letters. Now, in 2nd grade, it is becoming more apparent how this problem is affecting her perfomance in school. She is very bright, but she is falling behind because she cannot keep up in class when she has to write. The logical conclusion would be - great, the increasing need not to have to hand write and to be able to use a keyboard instead will be extremely beneficial to her. But truthfully, I have not found this to be true. When she is using a computer, it does not seem that she has a relationship with what she is writing. She is pushing buttons and looking up at the screen, but there is a connection broken by the process. When she is handwriting, she is much more engaged with her ideas. As adults, we may now find it easier and faster to type rather than to write, but we already have the basic relationship between letters and words instilled in us by having learned to form them by hand first.
For the past year, I have been trying to teach my four-year-old the alphabet. Every night we would practice - I would point to a letter like V and she would say K. I have noticed an almost miraculous difference this past month with my daughter's relationship with words. Ever since her preschool teacher started practicing hand writing in class, she has been able to identify her letters. She has even been able to recognize some words. It may have just been timing, but I really think there is a fundamental relationship between learning and the physical process of creating words. It may be that in the future, writing by hand will become obsolete, but I believe that this change will alter language acquisition to some degree.
I agree with April that at the formative years there is unquestionably an association between word recognition and vocab. development and the manual effort of writing. The spelling out of words helps children not only work through the phonetic process but also begin to learn the multi-faceted way in which we create words. When we write longhand, we are creating those words entirely on our own, not with the assistance of a computer.
In addition to this cognitive development, the manual effort of writing teaches students patience and dedication. Although laborious, this effort forces us to think about spelling, grammar and punctuation far more than typing on a computer would. These mental exercises definitely enhance a students' writing and critical thinking as well, regardless of age.
And while I see first hand with the students I teach a reluctance to hand-write one's thoughts, and see on the flip side a more focused desire to express oneself in more detail through typing, I still disagree that handwriting is an obsolete skill set, but as April noted very astutely, we haven't seen the full effects of not practicing this craft. I, for one, hope we never do.
You both sound like you are talking about the nostalgia days. Though I think that signature and writing by hand does help us to formulate our own ideas, I do not think they have anymore to do with the creation of ideas than speech. Is speech better than writing? Ideas and thinking have little to do with ways you can write.
You are both right -- though -- children should learn to write by hand as a practice but it will have little to do with future - adult communication. The people I know with the best handwriting write little or not at all and the people who write long hand the most, well, it is painful to read.
Thanks for the comments. I appreciate it.
I understand your point, but I still think that there is a connection between learning to hand write and literacy. I know many people who have profound ideas and who are thoughtful speakers, but they also have no real skill with the written language. I think that we are moving into a world where there may be less of a need for effective communication skills through writing - a world that we can not even begin to understand yet. But for now, while so much of a person's success in school is still determined by basic reading skills, I will continue to fight my daughter's school for occupational therapy.
April Mae, I only hope that you're wrong and that there will never be a world where there is less of a need for writing skill. The power of the written word relies upon its permanence. Computers crash. Pencils need only be re-sharpened.
And Dugan, I must say I disagree with your assertion: " Penmanship has its merits... but it has little to do with the process of writing other than a vehicle..."
Actually, the relationship between the physical act of writing and that of creating a literary work is a highly subjective one. Having read extensively on the subject of creative writing, I've found most published authors have no definite preference-- some swear by the handwritten rough draft and it's mystical ability to tap into raw emotion, while others embrace the expediency of the digital platform.
The relative ease of editing makes the latter choice a more appealing one for this writer, but then again, sometimes there is nothing like the good old fashioned feeling of pen sliding over paper. It's a powerful tonic and one that should not be so easily dismissed. In the end, the final product will determine whose process worked-- and whose didn't.
Believe it or not I actually have a preference... or I should say, a series of superstitions. I write my long fiction on the computer, my short fiction on 8 1/2" x 14" yellow legal paper, and my poetry on anything except "formal" paper (napkins, boxes, walls, whatever). Why? Dunno. Because it works, I guess. Same reason I will repeat whatever it was I did that single-handedly got the Phillies to win last night. We're a superstitious breed, I think that's the left brain's last gasp at trying to get hold and give reason for something that cannot be gotten hold of nor given reason for....