Fixating on handwriting

 I often think back to the countless hours spent in school perfecting penmanship in exercise books. Handwriting played a significant role throughout my school life, from practicing signatures to creating calculus crib sheets to writing lab reports.

I look now at my children, and wonder with some regret whatever happened to the art of handwriting. When my son was in primary school, I would look at his illegible written assignments in considerable alarm.

Surely, being able to decipher the handwritten word is the first basic step in recognizing possible literary genius? His teachers assured me that this was all part of allowing creative juices to flow without the distraction of neat handwriting. While not fully convinced, I had to accept that perhaps this was the evolution of a touchy-feely progressive pedagogy.

Handwriting instruction has been replaced by keyboard skills in many schools which dedicate less time to this art, and many studies propagate whole-heartedly against handwriting in school. Children today are digital natives, and keyboards are appendages to their bodies, allowing them to be creative and efficient.

Using a keyboard has allowed them to improve on speed, volume, clarity and depth of what they write, and global classrooms are being taken over by technology. Handwriting seems to be an obsolete skill into which there is little point in investing more time.

Cognitive powers

Studies have shown a connection between handwriting and the increased ability to process and remember what is being written, and the connection between the development of fine motor skills and cognitive ability is well documented.

There is evidence that handwriting improves spelling, composition and comprehension, and no denying that math remains very much a handwritten subject. Handwritten signatures have become the last vestige of our own identities, without which we would be relegated to being anonymous binary code.

So how to make peace with this situation, where everyday communication tools dominate our lives? Most people I know are more likely to be carrying a smartphone than a pen, and the exponential pace of ICT progress as we know it will soon overtake the need for any handwriting at all.

And in that lies the real conundrum: We like to think that we are experts in our children’s education simply because we also went to school and can remember what we were taught.

Can we come to terms with the possibility that our fixation with handwriting is not really about its documented benefits, but simply because it provides us with a nostalgic comfort zone which we can relate to? For me, at the end of the day, it really boils down to whether or not my children will be able to handwrite their visa forms without being denied entry.

Waheeda Samji is director of The Latham School