The cognitive impacts of handwriting vs typing are actually pretty major especially for cursive. Handwriting does things to your mind that typing just doesn’t do nearly as well.
Not sure that means cursive needs to be taught in school, I don’t feel that strongly on it either way, but handwriting is easy to dismiss as an outdated method of recording information without realizing the greater value it has as a generative thinking process that facilitates mental plasticity.
We haven’t figured out how to replicate that power yet with keyboards and computers. I imagine eink tablets with styluses do a similar thing to the brain but that is still handwriting just on a digital screen.
It makes me sad sometimes that a lot of adults I know will just laugh at the idea of using a pen and paper to handwrite something and totally miss the point that handwriting things is only tangentially about recording information.
It’s not a matter of handwriting vs typing, we still teach handwriting in school and always will, and we don’t teach typing at all.
It’s a question of whether we teach cursive in addition to handwriting. Non-cursive print is necessary as most official writing Americans will do in their lives requires it. It’s also more than good enough for journaling, note taking, and personal letters. Those who hand write a lot will even use joined-up writing to increase their writing speed, which just leaves no purpose left for the use of cursive besides the elegance.
Typing classes were briefly popular during the advent of the computer workstation, but they’re pretty rare these days. They’re not part of required curriculums so not a lot of schools teach typing or “keyboarding”. Some may still teach it, though some still teach cursive.
Cursive isn’t necessarily more difficult for all students, for some students cursive is easier to grasp (and helps them learn to write print better as well).
It’s not a matter of difficulty, it’s a matter of benefit vs the cost of resources. You can’t eliminate the teaching of print handwriting, so if you want to teach cursive you have to do that in addition to teaching print handwriting. There is limited space in a school’s curriculum, and though there would be some personal benefit to teach cursive, there isn’t enough practical benefit to include it over other subjects.
You have to remember that school is compulsory in the U.S. and so public schools need to choose subject matter that will best prepare the average student for adult life. Cursive is more useful as an art form than as a practical skill, and there are better art forms to teach in school as well that allow for more creative expression.
Cursive writing might be personally enlightening for students that enjoy it, but it’s not something that needs to be or should be taught as part of the required curriculum.
I suppose it shows the lack of cursive education that y’all are calling cursive an art for . Definitely not. You want calligraphy. Cursive is connected writing with modifications to make it smoother and more efficient to write
We have connected writing with modifications to make it smoother and more efficient to write. This is often taught in school and is very commonly used. “Cursive” to an American however refers to a very specific type of script which is much closer to calligraphy than it is regular handwriting and it’s this type of script that the post is referring to.
handwriting is easy to dismiss as an outdated method of recording information without realizing the greater value it has as a generative thinking process that facilitates mental plasticity.
Could you elaborate (the italicized part)?
My understanding was that its purpose was about notation/writing speed, in an age before typewriters/keyboards.
To use an analogy, it’s the morse code of writing, something that’s not really needed today.
My understanding was that its purpose was about notation/writing speed, in an age before typewriters/keyboards.
To use an analogy, it’s the morse code of writing, something that’s not really needed today.
I understand that perspective, no doubt typewriters and keyboards are a fantastic technology. Not that this really needs to be said but I don’t want to make it seem like I am just shaking my fist angrily at the future.
However, the pen/pencil and paper is an extremely powerful technology and in many senses the rise of typewriters, keyboards and computers in general has made it more clear precisely what is so powerful about the technology.
It is a reasonable approximation to think of the process of handwriting as thinking of words you want to write and then just writing them out. The reality though is the physical motor task of handwriting feedbacks back into the cognition and impacts your thinking and memory retention. The specifics of that are complex on the neuroscience side, but we don’t really to go deep down into the science. All you need to really understand is that the medium that we record and process information has an effect upon how our brain processes that information. Different connections are made, different things are obvious, different mistakes and discoveries are made.
One straightforward example is for many people when they are experiencing intense emotions or a difficult decision, the process of simply writing down how they feel can have a surprisingly significant impact on helping process those emotions. It isn’t the notes the person makes at the end that matter, it is something about the process of handwriting (independent of metrics like how quickly information can be recorded) that does something that typing the same thing out on a computer doesn’t do as well. Try it.
A more abstract advantage of pen and paper is that the process of idea generation can proceed extremely far before any explicit context needs to be defined for the idea. On a computer before you begin a project or try to flesh out an idea you have to decide what digital format to put your notes in (a word document? plain text? spreadsheet? a notes app? google doc?), create a file somewhere and then decide how many files of that type you will have for that project, how you will organize them and other decisions that are necessary to contextualize the idea you are developing. Whatever file type and subsequent software you choose to type in sets certain strict limitations on how you can extrapolate and manipulate on what you write. It makes certain kinds of directions an idea can travel in much much more difficult. A pen and paper has strict limitations too, a limited amount of space, a limited capacity to erase and no fast way to search for specific information but these limitations don’t frontload the need for careful categorization at the beginning of the process. What you begin to write on a piece of paper can become anything, it can radically transform from one type of idea or data into another in a natural fashion. Your brain can make creative connections, uncover insights and most importantly radically recontextualize information when using a pen and paper in a way that nothing except an eink tablet with a stylus or maybeee org mode in emacs can even hope to come close to.
I am super ADHD, I lose everything includes notes, so I try to type important things up in digital documents. However I take out a pen and paper (or my supernote) and handwrite out my ideas and thoughts all the time. For big projects or ideas after I have developed an idea enough to understand the best digital context for it I can just transfer it (that transfer “cost” of having to type it out just being another mental processing step in reality) into some kind of digital form after context and structure has become a lot easier to define. For small projects the idea can live its whole life on the paper and never need to be recorded, the benefit living in solely in my head.
In general I think we should think deeply about why we have such narrow definitions of “technology” and what unconscious biases are embedded in it (“technology” must be hardware with computer chips or touchscreens or advanced sensors).
The cognitive impacts of handwriting vs typing are actually pretty major especially for cursive. Handwriting does things to your mind that typing just doesn’t do nearly as well.
Not sure that means cursive needs to be taught in school, I don’t feel that strongly on it either way, but handwriting is easy to dismiss as an outdated method of recording information without realizing the greater value it has as a generative thinking process that facilitates mental plasticity.
We haven’t figured out how to replicate that power yet with keyboards and computers. I imagine eink tablets with styluses do a similar thing to the brain but that is still handwriting just on a digital screen.
It makes me sad sometimes that a lot of adults I know will just laugh at the idea of using a pen and paper to handwrite something and totally miss the point that handwriting things is only tangentially about recording information.
In that case we should learn tachygraphy/stenography, that would be a game changer for note taking.
It’s not a matter of handwriting vs typing, we still teach handwriting in school and always will, and we don’t teach typing at all.
It’s a question of whether we teach cursive in addition to handwriting. Non-cursive print is necessary as most official writing Americans will do in their lives requires it. It’s also more than good enough for journaling, note taking, and personal letters. Those who hand write a lot will even use joined-up writing to increase their writing speed, which just leaves no purpose left for the use of cursive besides the elegance.
I had typing classes.
Typing classes were briefly popular during the advent of the computer workstation, but they’re pretty rare these days. They’re not part of required curriculums so not a lot of schools teach typing or “keyboarding”. Some may still teach it, though some still teach cursive.
Cursive isn’t necessarily more difficult for all students, for some students cursive is easier to grasp (and helps them learn to write print better as well).
It’s not a matter of difficulty, it’s a matter of benefit vs the cost of resources. You can’t eliminate the teaching of print handwriting, so if you want to teach cursive you have to do that in addition to teaching print handwriting. There is limited space in a school’s curriculum, and though there would be some personal benefit to teach cursive, there isn’t enough practical benefit to include it over other subjects.
You have to remember that school is compulsory in the U.S. and so public schools need to choose subject matter that will best prepare the average student for adult life. Cursive is more useful as an art form than as a practical skill, and there are better art forms to teach in school as well that allow for more creative expression.
Cursive writing might be personally enlightening for students that enjoy it, but it’s not something that needs to be or should be taught as part of the required curriculum.
I suppose it shows the lack of cursive education that y’all are calling cursive an art for . Definitely not. You want calligraphy. Cursive is connected writing with modifications to make it smoother and more efficient to write
We have connected writing with modifications to make it smoother and more efficient to write. This is often taught in school and is very commonly used. “Cursive” to an American however refers to a very specific type of script which is much closer to calligraphy than it is regular handwriting and it’s this type of script that the post is referring to.
Could you elaborate (the italicized part)?
My understanding was that its purpose was about notation/writing speed, in an age before typewriters/keyboards.
To use an analogy, it’s the morse code of writing, something that’s not really needed today.
I understand that perspective, no doubt typewriters and keyboards are a fantastic technology. Not that this really needs to be said but I don’t want to make it seem like I am just shaking my fist angrily at the future.
However, the pen/pencil and paper is an extremely powerful technology and in many senses the rise of typewriters, keyboards and computers in general has made it more clear precisely what is so powerful about the technology.
It is a reasonable approximation to think of the process of handwriting as thinking of words you want to write and then just writing them out. The reality though is the physical motor task of handwriting feedbacks back into the cognition and impacts your thinking and memory retention. The specifics of that are complex on the neuroscience side, but we don’t really to go deep down into the science. All you need to really understand is that the medium that we record and process information has an effect upon how our brain processes that information. Different connections are made, different things are obvious, different mistakes and discoveries are made.
One straightforward example is for many people when they are experiencing intense emotions or a difficult decision, the process of simply writing down how they feel can have a surprisingly significant impact on helping process those emotions. It isn’t the notes the person makes at the end that matter, it is something about the process of handwriting (independent of metrics like how quickly information can be recorded) that does something that typing the same thing out on a computer doesn’t do as well. Try it.
A more abstract advantage of pen and paper is that the process of idea generation can proceed extremely far before any explicit context needs to be defined for the idea. On a computer before you begin a project or try to flesh out an idea you have to decide what digital format to put your notes in (a word document? plain text? spreadsheet? a notes app? google doc?), create a file somewhere and then decide how many files of that type you will have for that project, how you will organize them and other decisions that are necessary to contextualize the idea you are developing. Whatever file type and subsequent software you choose to type in sets certain strict limitations on how you can extrapolate and manipulate on what you write. It makes certain kinds of directions an idea can travel in much much more difficult. A pen and paper has strict limitations too, a limited amount of space, a limited capacity to erase and no fast way to search for specific information but these limitations don’t frontload the need for careful categorization at the beginning of the process. What you begin to write on a piece of paper can become anything, it can radically transform from one type of idea or data into another in a natural fashion. Your brain can make creative connections, uncover insights and most importantly radically recontextualize information when using a pen and paper in a way that nothing except an eink tablet with a stylus or maybeee org mode in emacs can even hope to come close to.
I am super ADHD, I lose everything includes notes, so I try to type important things up in digital documents. However I take out a pen and paper (or my supernote) and handwrite out my ideas and thoughts all the time. For big projects or ideas after I have developed an idea enough to understand the best digital context for it I can just transfer it (that transfer “cost” of having to type it out just being another mental processing step in reality) into some kind of digital form after context and structure has become a lot easier to define. For small projects the idea can live its whole life on the paper and never need to be recorded, the benefit living in solely in my head.
In general I think we should think deeply about why we have such narrow definitions of “technology” and what unconscious biases are embedded in it (“technology” must be hardware with computer chips or touchscreens or advanced sensors).