From Today's New York Times...

[Recoil Rob]

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/06/20/why-handwriting-is-still-essential-in-the-keyboard-age/?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

[graystranger]

Thanks so much for posting this. I am collecting articles on the importance of handwriting. So many so-called experts (many "educators" are not experts, they just have an opinion) are quick to dismiss the basics without reviewing the negative aspects involved.

 

Love your avatar, my first dog was a Boston terrier, born in 1960.

[JotterAddict62]

We all still need to write words down on paper. When the electric power goes out then what?

[inkstainedruth]

Interesting article. Thanks for posting the link.

In a weird bit of synchronicity, I just had a conversation a day or two ago with a woman from Ontario, who was also decrying the giving up of teaching cursive (her handwriting was beautiful).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[ac12]

 

We all still need to write words down on paper. When the electric power goes out then what?

 

 

 

I had a similar discussion/argument with a wise-mouth young IT guy who thought EVERYTHING should be on the computer, and you don't need paper manuals.

I told him "when the power fails, your IT system recovery procedure is in your computer...now what will you do?"

Kept him quiet for a while.

 

I have my notebook and a pencil, and I can do what I have to do.

Edited June 21, 2016 by ac12

[zwack]

  

I had a similar discussion/argument with a wise-mouth young IT guy who thought EVERYTHING should be on the computer, and you don't need paper manuals.

I told him "when the power fails, your IT system recovery procedure is in your computer...now what will you do?"

Kept him quiet for a while.

I have my notebook and a pencil, and I can do what I have to do.

We keep a printed copy of the really important recovery information... I turn up to meetings with a notebook and pens and I am one of the top IT guys in my company.

 

Most stuff should be on computer at our company... But some of it needs to be kept in ways that it can still be got to...

 

We have back up power supplies at all of our non office locations (we are a healthcare company, you dont want to have to worry about the power going out when you are on the operating table) We have computers in multiple data centres and in the hospitals. We have emergency copies of medical records locally in case of network outages, and offsite backups as well. This is a lot easier to manage with electronic data than with printed copies of everything. But I keep enough information printed out that I can bring up enough of a system that can give me more information...

 

And yes, if we were a smaller organisation we wouldn't be able to afford all of these layers of backups. Then we would do less and have more paper.

Edited June 22, 2016 by zwack

[orfew]

Thanks so much for posting this. I am collecting articles on the importance of handwriting. So many so-called experts (many "educators" are not experts, they just have an opinion) are quick to dismiss the basics without reviewing the negative aspects involved.

 

Love your avatar, my first dog was a Boston terrier, born in 1960.

 

Is that your "expert opinion" or just your opinion?

[estie1948]

I was once taught to break down a word to determine what it means. Expert = ex - a has been and spert - a big drip under pressure.

 

Seriously, I very much enjoyed the article. There are real experts in these fields and, while experienced teachers may not be recognized as experts, they know a great deal of pertinent and valuable information on such subjects. Over the years I have come into contact with a great many teachers both in my business and son and grandkids. I have yet to meet one who had any experience who thought the teaching of handwriting was a waste of time.

 

Teaching of handwriting (both print and cursive) has, like other valuable subjects, been deleted from many a curriculum to provide more time for testing and test preparation. Standardized testing provides incomes for a great number of people, is the basis for existence of a large number of companies, provides income for a large number of printers and their employees, increases the sales of certain types of electronic equipment that otherwise would have no use, provides an increase in the sales of #2 pencils, prevents a great many teachers from actually teaching (they are forced to become test tutors), and is a completely wasteful activity that provides no meaningful, documentable information about any student. All of this consumes a very large portion of every school system's monetary resources.

 

A friend of mine who taught for over 35 years told me of an incident involving one of his students (he did not tell me the student's name). The student, a very poor reader, was the very first student to complete each section of each of the standardized tests. The student was obviously not reading the questions, but rather just making patterns with his answers. My teacher friend noted the student's testing activity and expected the student to receive horrendous scores. To my teacher friend's disbelief, the student placed in the top ten of the entire school system. At a faculty meeting not long after the test results were published, this teacher related the experience to the teachers. He said that almost every teacher had one or more students who never opened the test booklet and only filled in the answer sheet that score very well and all had stories about excellent students who score very poorly on the tests. I remember very vividly his disgust as he explained that the more a student knows on a tested subject, the more likely they are going to score average or below either because they over think many of the questions or because many of the questions are very poor test questions. He said he was sorely tempted to tell his students not to read any of the questions, but to just fill out the answer sheets. [Rant against standardized testing is now over]

 

Personally, I had one mean SOB of an elementary teacher who constantly had me rewrite assignments because of my poor penmanship. He once told me that if I were a mute (unable to speak) and discovered the cure to every kind of cancer, no one would ever know it because they could not read my handwriting. That one teacher is the reason I finished school, got both a bachelor's and a master's degree and was as successful as I was in my profession. I had the opportunity to tell him that and thank him before he died.

 

I asked him once while in his class, why he was so crazy about my (and every student's) handwriting. He actually sat down and explained it to me. "When you form your letters correctly, you have to think about the letters in the word you are writing which makes you actually think about what words you are writing which requires you to think about the question you are answering which requires you to think about the material we are covering. I am crazy about handwriting because it makes you think." And that from a teacher who taught in an elementary school that was departmentalized and his subject was science.

 

Our local schools do not teach penmanship or cursive. I am teaching my grandchildren. Right now I am not their favorite grandfather. That is okay, because that is how important I think teaching cursive is.

 

-David.

[Dragonmaster Lou]

I'll give a bit of my two cents here... but if cursive itself is no longer taught as part of the curriculum, it should at least be replaced with some other non-printing, non-block letter handwriting such as italic. While I happen to live in a state where cursive (for now), is still part of the curriculum, I would not be opposed to replacing it with italic instead of dropping it completely.

[Proto]

I'm one of the few that carries only a notebook (and the only one who carries a fountain pen, most of my colleagues use Fisher Space Pens) to meetings at my office of around 500 people, everyone else brings a laptop.

[pajaro]

Everything should be in the computer domain, electronically stored, to eliminate "islands of information." Which does not preclude having notes on paper, procedures to be executed to restore computer systems after hurricanes. power failures, air conditioning failures, head crashes and the like. This gives the paper bound no reason to feel smug about the vulnerabilities of electronic data systems. It's often easier to retrieve a procedure or document from an electronic storage system than to find it in a warehouse archive. The city I worked for had so much paper stored in City Hall that the floors were buckling under the weight of it. The paper world and the electronic world exist hand in hand, and I had a great deal of use from my Parker 51 and Montblanc 144 when I was an IT administrator.

[MarcS]

to Dragonmaster Lou's point above, a print style called "denelian" is taught at the elementary school my children attended. the letters are more curvy/loopy than the block print i was taught, and when they write quickly the letters merge somewhat into cursive form.

handwriting is also key to a multidisciplinary approach to teach early reading skills. pencil and paper, finger in sand, etc. provide muscle memory reinforcement of the visual recognition and comprehension of words and phrases, a sensory experience which cannot be accomplished with a keyboard.

[Cryptos]

...

 

I asked him once while in his class, why he was so crazy about my (and every student's) handwriting. He actually sat down and explained it to me. "When you form your letters correctly, you have to think about the letters in the word you are writing which makes you actually think about what words you are writing which requires you to think about the question you are answering which requires you to think about the material we are covering. I am crazy about handwriting because it makes you think." And that from a teacher who taught in an elementary school that was departmentalized and his subject was science.

 

As a teenager I remember going into pubs (I'm not sure what various national equivalents are) and being impressed by the bar staff who could take an order for a complicated round of drinks, make them, serve them and then in an instant tell you the total price. All without laying a hand on the cash register. As the years rolled on I noticed that fewer and fewer bar staff could still do this, and that more were simply grabbing for a calculator and entering prices.

 

It struck me at the time that something was being eroded if not already lost. It took me a while to understand what the important part was,and it is this: by using the calculators, by relying on them, the operators (bar staff in this case, but probably starts in school now), were losing their sensitivity to numbers. It's not so much the arithmetic skills per se, but the subtle recognition of the relationship between numbers.

 

You may wonder how this is related to handwriting. I think that it is very similar to teacher's explanation in the quote.

 

 

Technology should be an adjunct to human skill. However, in general, we have to understand something in order to acquire skills. If we for one moment feel that the skills are no longer required - that a machine can do it for us - then we run the potential danger of abandoning our understanding too.

 

 

And for the sci-fi fans among us: Roll on the Butlerian Jihad!

[EBUCKTHORN]

The debate continues:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/opinion/handwriting-just-doesnt-matter.html

 

and:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/books/review/history-and-uncertain-future-of-handwriting-anne-trubek.html

[abstract49]

For some reason, my browser (Safari on a Mac) can't open any of these links. I've never had any issues with NYT links in the past.

[Orthostylos]

Interesting articles, but frankly I have some reservations on the points made, for instance that carving words into stone is a skill that supposedly no longer learned or needed, yet this is what remains to us from antiquity. Papyrus is long gone.

The contents of the library of Alexandria are a matter of myth, but now non-existent.

 

Were the Rosetta Stone not carved, our ability to decipher hieroglyphics would not exist.

 

Keyboarding results in what, if your hard drive is hijacked by a hacker, or some other disaster makes the bits an bytes disappear?

 

My impression was the declaration of independence, was initially printed, and the handwritten version was later done and signed. Everyone wants to see the John Hancock.

 

I certainly treasure a hand written thank you note, as opposed to a text message.

 

I know I'm rambling.....

[EBUCKTHORN]

I just tried my own post-same browser (Safari on Mac) and had no problems. I believe I'd read the article in last Sunday's (8/20) Review section. Good luck!

[Precise]

I find another benefit from taking pen or pencil in hand -- illustrations. I am an engineer and my notebooks are full of words and sketches. I can't do that on my computer.

 

I often chuckle when I read an excessively wordy article. The author takes too many paragraphs to poorly convey something that could be communicated with a simple sketch. I say to myself, "This article was composed on a computer, when a pencil or pen would have been much better".

 

The saying "A picture is worth a thousand words" is often true.

 

Alan

[Buzz_130]

When I was a young aviator, we carried thousands of pages of technical manuals and regulations out to the aircraft. During quarterly testing, each crew member had a closed and open book test. As I gained experience, I knew where to find most information in just about every regulation.

 

As we transitioned to electronic publications, we issued thumb drives (no longer allowed to use those) and then tablets. Open book testing became the game of control-F and search the database for key information. Not bad when you need to find something quickly. But evaluators and commanders began to notice that general knowledge declined. A trip out to the aircraft to talk about systems or procedural knowledge became a session of blank stares.

 

The Information Age put the sum of human data into the palm of each person's hand. The average person can find things that once only "experts" knew in any field. What we are losing is the ability to analyze, synthesize, and fuse data into meaningful information. The quick access to information means we've lost the wisdom to use it.

 

In my own workflow, when I need to think, I write by hand (with a fountain pen). I generally use cursive as I restarted writing in cursive when I became a fountain pen user. The letters flow, and I find I take fewer strokes in cursive. If I have to write small, say on the margins of a information paper, then I will block print so the intended recipient can read the small words. Writing with my hands connects my mind to the problem.

 

When I need to produce, I enter the world of Microsoft or Adobe and argue about font size and font color.

 

Buzz

[EBUCKTHORN]

And another entry: large sidebar "A Brief History of Handwriting" accompanying an interview with Margaret Atwood, pages 60 & 61 MOTHER JONES, September/October 2016