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Economist Article - The Comeback Of Cursive


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Great article touching on a lot of hot button issues

I'm looking forward to reading Ms Trubek's book.

Although with this article its title might have to be revised

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Excellent article. Thank you for posting it. I especially enjoyed the portion that pointed out the advantages to using fountain pens.

 

-David (Estie).

No matter how much you push the envelope, it will still be stationery. -Anon.

A backward poet writes inverse. -Anon.

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Great article!

 

I'm also intrigued by the intersection between digital and ink. My Apple Pencil senses the pressure of each stroke, and it does an excellent job of recording my strokes. I currently use it for photography editing, but I'd like to use the digital ink for thinking and writing.

 

Of course, I have far too many fountain pens to ever let my ink and paper sit idle.

 

Buzz

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Interesting, yes. But there is a serious miss-claim about the current research in the opening paragraph, in this sentence:

 

More importantly—and intriguingly—though, learning to join letters up in a continuous flow across the page improves a child’s ability to retain and understand concepts and inferences in a way that printing those letters (and, a fortiori, typing them on a keyboard) does not.

 

The article, accurately, then goes on to reference the research, which was NOT about connected writing versus printing. The research has been about handwriting versus typing, and mostly about note-taking and memory.

 

There is no research showing that connected writing (of various kinds, right?) improves cognition or memory more than printing or other forms of handwriting (using characters, for example, in Mandarin).

 

This is not a well-written article because the author did not even represent the referenced research properly. It's tough to begin with a blatantly incorrect thesis.

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Great article, in spite of what TSherbs says is a, "...blatantly incorrect thesis..." For me, the main purpose of the article was to show the comeback of writing, and why this is a good thing. I think the author, clearly and as briefly as possible, accomplished this task. Remember, this is a magazine article, not an academic thesis/essay.

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Interesting, yes. But there is a serious miss-claim about the current research in the opening paragraph, in this sentence:

 

The article, accurately, then goes on to reference the research, which was NOT about connected writing versus printing. The research has been about handwriting versus typing, and mostly about note-taking and memory.

 

There is no research showing that connected writing (of various kinds, right?) improves cognition or memory more than printing or other forms of handwriting (using characters, for example, in Mandarin).

 

This is not a well-written article because the author did not even represent the referenced research properly. It's tough to begin with a blatantly incorrect thesis.

You're right. The one important factor is using the hand to form letters, so it matters not whether the letters are written in cursive, printed, Arabic, Japanese, or even a spontaneously made up language.

Typing on a keyboard doesn't do this as there is no difference to typing an "A" compared to typing any other letter so the cognitive benefits are zero.

 

Other than this minor oversight it was a great article to read, and in a way hopeful.

Edited by Bluey
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You're right. The one important factor is using the hand to form letters, so it matters not whether the letters are written in cursive, printed, Arabic, Japanese, or even a spontaneously made up language.

Typing on a keyboard doesn't do this as there is no difference to typing an "A" compared to typing any other letter so the cognitive benefits are zero.

 

Other than this minor oversight it was a great article to read, and in a way hopeful.

I agree, Bluey, and I value handwriting and teach it and even bring some of my pens to class. But it is important to value writing for the right reasons, or we might be persuaded to abandon it or cling to it for the wrong reasons.

 

Handwriting is valuable for convenience and for retention of memory and synthetic reasoning. Connected writing is valuable for cultural reasons, if you happen to share those values. But it is not additionally valuable for cognitive or educational reasons (no more so than printing or some other version of handwriting).

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Interesting, yes. But there is a serious miss-claim about the current research in the opening paragraph ...

 

There is no research showing that connected writing (of various kinds, right?) improves cognition or memory more than printing or other forms of handwriting (using characters, for example, in Mandarin).

 

...

 

An interesting claim--would you mind citing a reference or two demonstrating the total absence of such research? I'm particularly interested because a simple Google search brings up pages of references to connections between specifically cursive writing and cognition. Perhaps you meant that the author of the Economist article failed to cite this research to your satisfaction? That would be rather different than charging the author with a "serious miss-claim."

ron

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An interesting claim--would you mind citing a reference or two demonstrating the total absence of such research? I'm particularly interested because a simple Google search brings up pages of references to connections between specifically cursive writing and cognition. Perhaps you meant that the author of the Economist article failed to cite this research to your satisfaction? That would be rather different than charging the author with a "serious miss-claim."

ron

I've never read or seen anything like you are suggesting that is a publication of the research. Please share. I'll correct myself if you have found something legitimate (lots of articles claim to be referring to research as you describe, but then when you follow a link or look up a reference, one finds that the actual "research" is either not research at all or is a misrepresentation of the researchers' actual findings--like what happened in this article).

 

What looks good that you found? Why haven't you posted something that you found?

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An interesting claim--would you mind citing a reference or two demonstrating the total absence of such research? I'm particularly interested because a simple Google search brings up pages of references to connections between specifically cursive writing and cognition. Perhaps you meant that the author of the Economist article failed to cite this research to your satisfaction? That would be rather different than charging the author with a "serious miss-claim."

ron

I don't think it's necessary in this case to cite any research because of the science and rationale behind why handwriting, irrespective of how it's written, offers cognitive benefits whereas typing doesn't.

The underlying principle according to the studies is that the reason why it offers benefits is because each letter is different, whereas typing an "A" is no different to typing any other letter. That's why handwriting helps with recall and mental processing.

 

Thus, it doesn't matter whether it's cursive, block capitals, or any other type of handwriting.

 

I suppose it could also be related to the fact that the more cues you have for a particular piece of information, the better the recall.

Edited by Bluey
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https://www.psychologytoday.com/.../why-writing-ha... Lists specifically cursive writing.

 

davidsortino.blogs.pressdemocrat.com/.../brain-research-and-cursive-writ... lists specifically cursive writing.

 

And from the New York Times:

 

"Putting pen to paper stimulates the brain like nothing else, even in this age of e-mails, texts and tweets. In fact, learning to write in cursive is shown to improve brain development in the areas of thinking, language and working memory. Cursive handwriting stimulates brain synapses and synchronicity between the left and right hemispheres, something absent from printing and typing.

The College Board found that students who wrote in cursive for the essay portion of the SAT scored slightly higher than those who printed.

As a result, the physical act of writing in cursive leads to increased comprehension and participation. Interestingly, a few years ago, the College Board found that students who wrote in cursive for the essay portion of the SAT scored slightly higher than those who printed, which experts believe is because the speed and efficiency of writing in cursive allowed the students to focus on the content of their essays. "

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/04/30/should-schools-require-children-to-learn-cursive/the-benefits-of-cursive-go-beyond-writing

As Ron stated there is plenty out there and it is not hard to find.

-David (Estie).

Edited by estie1948

No matter how much you push the envelope, it will still be stationery. -Anon.

A backward poet writes inverse. -Anon.

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