Is Handwriting dead?

[Caddington]

I am not sure which thread to post this on, but this one seems as good as any. 

 

There was a very interesting (if disturbing) article in today's Guardian. Obviously, it doesn't apply to those here, but is an interesting comment on society in general. Is this our future? 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/jan/21/signature-moves-are-we-losing-the-ability-to-write-by-hand

 

Any thoughts or comments?

[Doc Dan]

My handwriting has always looked dead, but I digress.

 

The education system is the culprit. However, some locales are taking back control of education from the de-educators and have reintroduced writing and reading (most college students have never read more than a few paragraphs in their lives). 

[Surlyprof]

5 hours ago, Caddington said:

I am not sure which thread to post this on, but this one seems as good as any. 

 

There was a very interesting (if disturbing) article in today's Guardian. Obviously, it doesn't apply to those here, but is an interesting comment on society in general. Is this our future? 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/jan/21/signature-moves-are-we-losing-the-ability-to-write-by-hand

 

Any thoughts or comments?

I was looking to see if anyone had posted this article yet.  I had just read it and found it supports a great amount of what I discovered teaching Industrial Design for 25+ years.  I have always advocated physical form construction projects in the first year prior to the introduction of 3D CAD tools.  The goal was to insure that students develop a kinesthetic relationship with form giving prior to trying to build form in the computer.  We learn a great deal about form through our hands when we shape things physically.  Once that understanding has been established, students better understood what they were building in CAD which accelerated that learning curve as well.  The introduction of 3D printing has helped students more readily connect their digital constructions to physical reality.  But, my students were often shocked when what came out of printers didn’t meet their expectations of what they thought they had created in the virtual tools.  However, if they had physically shaped a mockup of their design prior to building it in the computer, the design process flowed much more smoothly with fewer unpleasant surprises.  My experiences in the classroom has supported that kinesthetic learning is crucial to understanding when one is designing for our physical world.  This has become even more important as the students entering colleges had grown up with screens from infancy.  What’s going to provide a better understanding of a car, browsing photos on a website or checking it out in the showroom?

[TSherbs]

I don't have much interest in the thesis of this article....BUT....

 

I am a long-term fan of Philip Larkin, and I did not recognize the quote attributed to him in the last paragraph of this piece:

 

Quote

“For our flesh surrounds us with its own desires,” the poet Philip Larkin wrote. It also surrounds us with opportunities – to learn, to understand, to feel in a way that our vicarious, screen-based experiences do not. As our world becomes ever more saturated with images and virtualisations, we shouldn’t let our desire for alluring technologies eclipse the human need to see, touch and make things with our hands.

 

I can't find anything that Larkin wrote that includes this. Google AI suggests that it is "Church Going" that has this, but not my copy of it. My searches produce no other results except for this article (not usually a good sign).

 

Anyone know where this is from? I'll keep looking. I have his collected poems, but it will take me a while to double check all of them (310 pages of poems). 

[inkstainedruth]

Just last week I got into an argument with a friend of mine on FB about the studies posted about a few years ago on how taking notes by hand helps reinforce learning stuff (she claimed that the study was flawed in that it didn't actually TEST whether there was a correlation between what parts of your brain reacted to writing notes by hand and what the people in the study actually learned/retained.  And claimed that she (who I think might be ADD or ADHD) just "memorized" stuff.  Whereas *I* said that when I was taking art history classes in college, I was not only taking notes during the lectures, but making quickie sketches of the slide being shown as an additional memory job when studying for exams (and in the small group discussions putting an asterisk by the sketches the professor emphasized in those).  

Now admittedly, there are a number (7, IIRC) different ways to learn stuff (I once went to a lecture on that), which included learning stuff physically (such as dance steps).  But I also remember having a conversation with another friend a number of years ago, and how happy she was that the school district her kids were in DID teach handwriting.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[boilermaker1975]

There is much evidence that the more senses you use while studying the better the retention. This is because you are using more areas of the brain and have more cues for retrieval. Even the sense of touch is important and there are studies that show this beyond the one quoted in the article. I always tell my students to think with their pencils. You start drawing or writing what is know you are getting your sense of touch and site involved. It has been shown to verbalize what you are drawing helps even more.

 

I imagine it is the same reason people with synesthesia typically have better memories. Stimulation of one sense causes a response by another sense. Like hearing a sound that invokes some sort of taste. Or seeing a letter that invokes some color perception.

 

 

[TSherbs]

For anyone interested, I found the relevant Larkin poem that the author above quotes (misquotes, it turns out). Here it is:

 

 

Quote

Ignorance

by Philip Larkin

 

Strange to know nothing, never to be sure
Of what is true or right or real,
But forced to qualify or so I feel,
Or Well, it does seem so:
Someone must know.

Strange to be ignorant of the way things work:
Their skill at finding what they need,
Their sense of shape, and punctual spread of seed,
And willingness to change;
Yes, it is strange,

Even to wear such knowledge - for our flesh
Surrounds us with its own decisions -
And yet spend all our life on imprecisions,
That when we start to die
Have no idea why.

 

So, the quote in the article (and book) should read: "...for our flesh/ Surrounds us with its own decisions", which implies a greater sense of agency and responsibility on the part of our "bodies." The author of the article needs to get the quote right, and ought to do some work explaining how to read the line and make it relevant for their thesis. I wonder if an editor truncated this passage to make it fit the length requirement of this excerpt publication piece. I reread 106 pages of Larkin poems before finding this one, and so that has been a rewarding time.

 

 

[knarflj]

@TSherbs, thank you for taking the time to find that poem.  I have not (to my knowledge) read any Larkin before, but I now intend to read more as soon as the library can get a volume of his poems to me.  

[Inky_Ben]

On 1/21/2025 at 9:51 AM, Doc Dan said:

My handwriting has always looked dead, but I digress.

 

 

LOL.  Beat me to it.     My son's handwriting is almost illegible.   He's got great ideas. . . just make sure he is sitting in front of a keyboard.  I am not sure it is dead, per se.  But it is definitely a skill that will perish if not taught and used.