Learning handwriting

[G T]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

Saw this and thought of you people and wondered what you'd have to say on the subject;
http://www.good.is/?p=8133

Is learning to handwrite important in the understanding of words and communication? or, should we now learn to touch-type from an early age?

My instant thought is that handwriting is important. Especially in making notes of ideas or phone numbers etc, but thats probably just because its how I was educated I guess.

Maybe I'll experiment with not using a pen or pencil for a week (except drawing) and just using stickies and notes (though perhaps I should buy some piece of i-phone/blackberry type technology first…)

[typerror]

"I have yet to be convinced that making a graphite stick go in certain directions enhances intellectual development."

Heresy, idiocy the sky is falling.

Just kidding. As a calligrapher/lettering artist with both feet in the computer age I look at their opinion and just smile. I wonder if, in the future, there will be a correlation between never having picked up a graphite stick and never having gone to bed with a "good book?"

I know one thing... my kids never washed a dish with a sponge and soap. Use the dishwasher dad : )

Michael

[guifa]

I agree with typerror except I think we're already there almost, I think it's importance will come down to things like playing board games vs video games, reading a book vs watching a movie. It'll be one of those interesting facets about something that somehow in an elite crowd might make them seem "more intellectual" but not much else.

On the other hand, as a child of the computer age, and having done school projects on computer from third grade on (hard to do handwriting journals on the computer :) ), I find quickly drawing diagrams, taking non-textual notes and other sorts of things nearly impossible on the computer, at least not at the speed needed to keep up in class or a meeting. So barring some new fancy program, I expect to see handwriting live on as a very very niche use.

«El futuro es una línea tan fina que apenas nos damos cuenta de pintarla nosotros mismos». (La Luz Oscura, por Javier Guerrero)

[Dunwich Type]

The failing in this piece is that rather than suggest the problem is schools obsessing over wrote memorization of proscribed forms and ideas, the problem is the subject itself, and so the subject should be discontinued. I shouldn’t be too surprised, the piece was written by an educator. But is it really that hard to look at this situation and see that it’s no more different than creating systems where students are not taught to think about history or math but to relentlessly drilled to memorize just enough factoids to pass standard tests?

[John Hudson]

I think the author of the article is confusing the nature of the problem she and her son are facing, although the first paragraph says it all:

My son, who is in third grade, spends much of his school day struggling to learn how to form the letter “G.” Sometimes he writes it backwards. Sometimes the tail on his lowercase “T” goes the wrong way. His teachers keep telling him he may fail the state assessment standards.

The problem isn't handwriting, the problem is schools, teachers and things like state assessment standards. Most schooling is institutional child abuse, and giving up pens and pencils in favour of computers isn't going to change that.

I'd say that making a G backwards and then gradually understanding shape orientation is a pretty important developmental step: probably more important as a step than being able to write the G correctly. Of course, shape orientation can be learned in other ways, but writing letters and numbers is a good way to learn it and comes with other benefits: fine motor skills (which you don't get, for example, learning shape orientation by flipping and rotating shapes on a computer screen), and of course the ability to produce something that someone else can read, even if the only thing you have to hand is a stick of graphite. And contra what the author writes, there is lots of evidence of the importance of manual interaction in intellectual development (and for this reason it is one of the key principles of the Montessori method, which strikes me as pretty much the only humane and sane approach to education for young children).

[Nick Shinn]

Right on, John.

**

Almost $5 billion of pens, pencils and markers are sold in the US every year.
Presumably these will be written with, although pencils are also useful for making seed-holes in soil.
This blogger's understanding of the issue is subjectively skewed, to put it politely.

Somewhat related, shouldn't doctors (who write prescriptions) be required to pass a writing exam as part of their qualifications?
How much more efficient would that make the work of pharmacists, and may even save a few lives.

[dezcom]

Flipped and rotated letters by children are a very NORMAL sign of development and get corrected as soon as the particular child develops a bit more. It is NOTHING to be concerned about nor dreaded. Government insistence that standardized testing by means of remembering meaningless dribble has done more to dismantle education than anything. Government officials are seeking ways to "PROVE" that children are learning as much as those in other countries and force teachers to waste precious time on test preparation rather than on learning important skills. All of these tests have done is prove that kids learned more before we started testing!
Exercising the brain is an important thing to do. One of the important ways to do it is by reading and writing. Writing is a developmental process which begins slowly with numerous errors which give students something to examine and learn by doing. No wonder students today have so little initiative, they have it strangled out of them before they are 10 years old!

It isn't a matter of if we will later in life communicate by our handwriting, it is a case of learning the process of having different segments of our brain work together to do many different tasks.

ChrisL

[nina]

"The problem isn’t handwriting, the problem is schools, teachers and things like state assessment standards."

But that doesn't rule out the question of the respective importance that should be attributed to learning handwriting, and other methods of producing letters. I see, and respect, the point that learning which way round to draw a "G" has beneficial effects besides actually learning about lettershapes, but shouldn't education also be about preparing kids for the world they live in? Meaning, get them in touch with the tools of the time as well.

For what it's worth, I learned to write (and read) with my mum's typewriter when I was about four. I don't think this harmed my understanding of words and communication at all. Quite the opposite, actually. "Look, Ma, I can press these keys here in a different order and it makes a new word!"

That said, I'm not sure the idea of trying to immediately and completely abolish handwriting is fruitful, or practicable today (though it might be soon). I'm thinking a small dose of handwriting will remain in our lives as a tool next to other tools for a while; at least as long as we don't have good enough digital tools to enable us to note down say a phone number quickly, handwriting will remain useful*. – But definitely, teach kids to type!

* And maybe voice recognition will/can be just that. But accessibility factors in here as well; not everyone will be able to afford fancy tools when they could use pen and paper.

[hrant]

Disclaimer: I have neither read the article nor most
of the comments in this thread. Why? Well, time:

Graham, time is the most valuable thing you have - don't waste it learning something you won't need. How much will you need handwriting? What will it teach you? Do take one calligraphy class (not the same thing as handwriting) if you have some extra time, but take a bag of salt with you! Most calligraphy teachers (like most any teacher I guess) engage in self-validation to the point of deluding their students concerning the importance of their own world.

And finally, some good news:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/3103421.stm

hhp

[aluminum]

Well, it's editorial so it's meant to stir the pot. Handwriting is essential, of course...it's a foundation skill set for us to learn the alphabet and to read.

That said, as a parent of young kids, there is some arguments for not depending on it so much. Kids are definitely typing much younger than they ever were before.

Our 7 year old has atrocious handwriting. Part of that is due to switching schools where they were mixing handwriting methods. Part of that is likely genetic. ;0) But put him in front of the computer, and he can type just fine.

So, I agree in that as soon as handwriting becomes the hurdle between the subject matter and the student absorbing it, it's time to allow for alternatives.

[Quincunx]

I think handwriting is a very important part of our development as a child (or even as adults). I don't think it's a matter of needing it or not. It also teaches a young brain abstract thinking, hand-eye coördination, etc. I can't really explain it very well in English, but I think you get my point.

I can't imagine why someone would not want to learn how to write well. Just because the 'need' for it is becoming a less important factor? I think that's a pretty weak argument. You also don't 'need' to learn how to play the piano, but alot of people do it anyway.

I can remember I was really proud when I learned how to write somwhat readable. My first school used to teach a non-italic non-connected type of handwriting, when I switched schools the new school tought a connected-italic-like writing method, and I loved it! Now I could write in two different ways, how marvelous! This is also what sparked my interest in typography and type design.

[enne_son]

Writing turns a disparate collection of scribbled and divergent objective-correlatives of ideas, or sounds, or syllabic primitives into a script. Hallmarks of a script are the optical-grammatical kinship and combinatorial logic of it's forms, allowing word gestalts to form. We learn writing to trick our bodies into understanding in the most visceral and enduring of ways the idea that our alphabet is a script.

[bowerbird]

writing by hand is important.

so is learning how to draw.

and playing a musical instrument.

_and_ learning to type.

and do sudoku.

and tie knots.

and do origami.

and change your oil.

physical dexterity leads to mental dexterity.

-bowerbird

[hrant]

> Writing turns a disparate collection of scribbled and divergent objective-
> correlatives of ideas, or sounds, or syllabic primitives into a script.

In headless chicken mode, yes. Ideally, it is thought that does this.
And this is why Hangul makes Latin look like a village idiot.

hhp

[Don McCahill]

I think this is a situation where a parent is refusing to admit that their child is not perfect. Since the child is clearly perfect, it must be the world the child inhabits that is at fault.

Let your kid fail. They might grow a bit, if you let them outside of the cocoon of parenting you are enveloping them in.

[enne_son]

I said: "Writing turns a disparate collection of scribbled and divergent objective correlatives of ideas, or sounds, or syllabic primitives into a script." Hrant replied: "Ideally, it is thought that does this." Hangul is his basis for this.

What's distinctive about Hangul is its intelligence as a representational system. This includes its basis in articulatory phonetics, and it's transparency to syllabic componency. However as a system of marks or strokes, according to the wikipedia.org entry on Hangul that I consulted, all Hangul letters follow the rules of Chinese calligraphy.

By the 1400s, chinese calligraphy had long become an optical-grammatically mature and combinatorially powerful script.

Writing is not the headless horseman Hrant wants to pretend it is. The problem with the latin script is not it's optical-grammatical structure, nor its combinatory arithmetic. It's its wonkiness as a representational system for the articulatorily fluid and linguistically polyglot environment it has to serve, extending it far beyond the Latin of it's birth.

Learning writing is an inculcation of the perceptual psychophysical grammatology of a script. [edited]

In Hangul the isomorphism is between the physical gestural logic of the hand in making marks, drawn feom an inherited mark-grammer, and the articulatory gestural logic of the mouth in making sounds.

[hrant]

> Hangul is his basis for this.

No.
My basis is... thought!

> all Hangul letters follow the rules of Chinese calligraphy.

Actually, it is documented that the initial proposal consisted entirely of constructed letterforms, which -in part- attempted to visualize the speech organs, with no basis on Chinese calligraphy, or any calligraphy. It was to appease his court, which was of course infested with status-quo Chinese-language bureaucrats, that the Chinese calligraphy angle was spliced in. Without that ruse Koreans would have remained stuck.

In any case, you shouldn't conveniently forget that Hangul was invented way before the digital era! If it were invented today, King Sejong's astuteness would probably have incorporated the best of current technology.

> Writing is not the headless horseman Hrant wants to pretend it is.

Writing is not headless. People who cling to it as children are. They are afraid of leaving the house. May the gods give them the strength... or at least prevent them from dragging the rest of us down with them.

> Learning writing is an inculcation of the inner workings of a script.

For almost all scripts that's certainly true. But some of us are more interested in improvement, as opposed to simply imitating past mistakes.

The only real way to figure out how a script needs to work is to... think!

hhp

[hrant]

Headless? A hand is not a head - don't be this:

 

Think With Your Brain™

hhp

[G T]

Hrant, are you saying that you believe we should attempt to construct a new alphabet (or method of writing) to better articulate the way we think?

In fact I wonder if written language is capable of properly explaining thought (or even spoken language). Would it have to be constructed of forms that could have lots of additional marks 'bolted on' in order to express the various associations with which we make up any one thought?

hmmmmmm. Two beers and I'm talking this much rubbish.

Going back to handwriting, I must say that maybe I could type stuff on a computer, but I do enjoy the act of writing; that what I learnt as a child has become this mostly unintelligable series of lines with bumps in them…

[G T]

Think With Your Brain™

I'd say to isolate the brain is a mistake. We think with our entire body - it shapes the way we view the world, and the way we interact with (attempt to) explain it.

[enne_son]

Actually, it is documented... [Hrant]

Where?

[hrant]

Graham, I don't think a fresh alphabet with some sort of collection of forms that go directly to thought is at all feasible. Above all, I like being practical. What remains very practical however is something like Legato, which throws the hand overboard (no matter how much the acolytes of GN want to distort it).

> Would it have to be constructed of forms that
> could have lots of additional marks ’bolted on’

Well, although that's not what I was thinking, I certainly believe that writing systems can be much more complex than the Latin script for example, leveraging our reading abilities better. Just like Morse Code can work, but it's not at all efficient. Chinese I don't think is too complex, and Hangul certainly isn't.

> I do enjoy the act of writing

Me too!
I like lard too; but I don't pretend it's a cornerstone of society.

> I’d say to isolate the brain is a mistake.

In fact it is impossible. But the hand does not contain any cognitive powers! One some level conclusions must be thought out, using the brain. And it does not make sense to allow the circumstantial structure of the hand/arm system (coupled to some arbitrary marking tool no less) to dictate what makes sense in terms of the functionality of reading. Unless one invokes some mystical synergy between all the parts of the body...

Anyway, I've said all this a million times before. But some people just don't want to let go - it would be no fun for them to let go, and they want to have fun. Ergo, it is not possible to administer psychotherapy via ASCII...

Peter, I forget. But it's out there, and not buried very deep. The thing is, why get hung up on a historical instance? Just because some guy did something one way or another means very little - it should not become an excuse to avoid the guidance of logic and reason.

hhp

[hrant]

Graham, something else that's possible is to purge the Latin alphabet (or really any writing system) of anachronistic flaws (for example the modularity of b/d/p/q*), while keeping it firmly decipherable to existing readers - in effect gently reforming the structures "under the radar" of the reader. One might be tempted to think that people are free to do this at the typeface design level (which is better than nothing - certainly much better than regurgitating the "hand" mantras), but what I'm talking about entails a move into a more formal realm, arising from a concerted analysis and its application (my old Alphabet Reform shtick).

* Those who uphold chirography while striking down grid-based "constructed" design conveniently ignore that the hand imposes a grid of its own - just not a Cartesian one! Not that grid-based constructed design has much merit mind you.

hhp

[peter_bain]

I wouldn't want to live in a world where music is only made by digital means (having been listening to lots of electronica recently). Thus, handwriting has much to commend it, and support from educators who link fine motor skills and cognitive development.

Designers and typographers who disdain handwriting on either aesthetic or technological grounds are welcome to their opinion.

[typerror]

"something else that’s possible is to purge the Latin alphabet (or really any writing system) of anachronistic flaws (for example the modularity of b/d/p/q*), while keeping it firmly decipherable to existing readers - in effect gently reforming the structures “under the radar” of the reader. "

How would you do this Hrant?

Genuinely interested

Michael