Handwriting #1: Why we are doing this

Background

Beginning about 1980, we got enthralled by computers, the academic world more than anyone else. We got the idea that nobody would ever write anything by hand again and computers would be our only way of communicating. Ohio public schools stopped teaching children handwriting because they were convinced that everything would be done by machine and picking up a pen would become an ancient, useless skill like churning butter.

I see the results of this attitude every semester:

• If I give a quiz in class, half of the students do not have pen or pencil, and I suspect that they do not even own them.
• If we do an in-class writing exercise, several students will be shaking their hands in pain after five minutes. You would think they had stuck their hands into a fire.
• If a student must miss a class session, I get an email with the incredibly insulting question: “Did we do anything in class?” It would never dawn on the student to simply ask a classmate for notes because nobody is taking notes. They do not have the paper, the pen, or the skill.
• If I write something important on the board, several students will stand up and take a picture with their phones. They lack the equipment to write something like “Class canceled next Friday.”
• Students in classes that require research writing are paralyzed. If they pull a physical book from a library shelf, they have no way to take notes or summarize what they see. Their only option is to use the copier. If they find material online, their only option is to copy and paste huge chunks of text. When it comes time to write the paper, they don’t have notes which they have thought about; they only have huge pieces of undigested original text.

It is worth remembering that this anti-writing bias is extremely recent and not at all world-wide. Nearly all students, from elementary age on up used to take notes in class, take notes on their reading, and hand-write exam responses.

Some good reasons to reclaim handwriting

Aside from personal artistic preferences (as my student, you will see that I have a wide variety of pens and ink according to my purpose and mood), handwriting gives you several solid advantages as a student:

• Handwriting makes you smarter. Those of you in education or psychology courses can ask your professors about this. Writing engages more brain cells (and different ones) than keyboarding—and obviously a LOT more than passively staring at the lecturer or copy/pasting from a website.
• Handwriting makes education work better.
  • Your professors are experts in their fields, and not everything they have to say is published online. Wouldn’t it be great to have some of that expertise available after the course ends?
  • If you are preparing a written piece, a hard copy rough draft allows you to see the whole thing and make informal additions and changes before typing your final copy. Professional writers often go through this cycle several times.
  • And of course, if you looking forward to an objective test or final exam, study notes are invaluable.
• Handwriting involves more of you in the process. You cannot write as fast as a person speaks, and even your own thoughts flow too quickly for you to put every word on paper, so you must think, summarize, and react on the fly. If you are taking notes in class, this is very different from “just letting the words flow over you.” (And after all, if you are doing all this mental work, it is very difficult to fall asleep in class.)
• Handwriting creates an artifact. If you need to go back over the course—to get ready for a test, for example—handwritten notes are a concrete something to look at. And I guarantee that if you write a physical letter to your mother or your romantic partner, they will keep it far longer than an email or a social media post.

And then there is A.I.

For several years, a very large proportion of college students has been using Artificial Intelligence to create their papers. It’s like signing up for a Culinary Arts course and buying a cake (and not a very good one) to submit as your own work. When the day is done, you have a very disappointing cake and no knowledge how to bake. With luck, you will end up with a meaningless certificate that says you are a baker.

Across Ashland University (and, indeed, in most other colleges in the USA) the faculty response has been to require in-class handwritten work that demonstrates you have mastered the material and can discuss it without any electronic help.

This is where we are going. You would be wise to prepare for it.