Using a pen helps us discover thought – but the writing’s on the wall
Keyboards are fine for communicating with machines, but handwriting captures the disconnected and chaotic patterns of real thought.
This article is from theguardian.com by Andrew Brown.
Swedish schools are considering whether to abandon the teaching of handwriting. They will continue to teach block capitals, but the subtleties of cursive writing will no longer be transmitted outside the elite. This seems to me to lose one of the most wonderful cognitive tools ever invented. Handwriting helps you think. The physicality of it makes the associated mental processes clearer and more memorable.
This kind of argument is quite wasted on educational bureaucrats, for whom the question is whether children can learn to type faster and more clearly than they can write by hand. After all, there’s no call for handwriting in most jobs today, any more than there is any requirement for independent thought.
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