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Comment by falcor84 | Hacker News Reader

Playing the devil's advocate here, why should we teach handwriting at all? Why not just have first-graders learn to type?

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Even if the goal isn't to learn handwriting. Learning handwriting is an excellent means to develop fine motor movement. Many of our modern tools utilise the precision we learned in handwriting to perform other functions. Whether that's a painter using a brush, or a surgeon using a scalpel, or everything in between.

Our non-dominant hand almost gives us a preview of what this could be like, so it seems that spending time to upskill the articulation of our hands is necessary: so we might as well use that time to learn handwriting since it has the benefit of working without electricity and translates well into the aforementioned tools.

For me there was no connection. I could never really write legibly, but have always done lots of precise hand work (soldering, etc).

I think we spent a month+ working on cursive writing. Which for me was a waste of time. I did inform the teacher I believed it was pointless, as people would be typing in the future. This would have been maybe 1985, me in 1st or 2nd grade.

Could just... use that time to teach them doing something useful that happens to include precision work ?

It honestly baffles me that people think handwriting does not constitute something useful.

I’d die of shame if I were ever caught unable to write. The whole concept is ludicrous.

Not being able to handwrite at all sure, that's kinda illiteracy, but don't need much more than basics.

> Playing the devil's advocate here, why should we teach handwriting at all? Why not just have first-graders learn to type?

I really can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.

The most obvious response is: sometimes you have to fill out forms on the spot.

Also, I personally find that I have much greater retention for handwritten vs typed information.

Also, even in the future, the power will go off once in awhile. Hand-writing would be like swimming. Not necessarily used much, but a skill worth keeping.

The level of training you need for basic swimming is only a couple hours. The teaching for handwriting is a lot more than that.

Anyone who uses the latin alphabet will have the character shapes memorized, so I'm sure they'd do just fine for emergency use even if they'd basically never written before.

That said, a huge amount of handwriting curriculum is actually motor skills practice, and that's pretty important!

Handwriting small notes in a meeting is less obtrusive than hauling out a laptop or thumbing a phone. I carry a 3.5 by 5.5 inch Cahier and a Spacepen at all times. If I need to write more extensively, I use one of my fountain pens.

It's also free-form. If I want to include a sketch or some math, it's easy.

"Also, I personally find that I have much greater retention for handwritten vs typed information."

Studies support your anecdote: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/taking-notes-by-hand-c...

All of those studies were funded by Big Pencil companies...a lot of bias.

Pentel, more like cartel, right?

Exactly!

Shh, they'll send Big Eraser to rub you out.

Interesting! I've watched my wife writing things while studying that I can't imagine her ever referring to and I have the impression she regards writing it as a means of helping her learn. I'm aware of the value of taking notes but what she's doing is direct copying, no digesting.

I wonder if that retention has to do with having learned handwriting before typing, and that one who learns typing first would have equal retention to one who writes. Would be interesting if a study is done on this! (Of course, carefully, so as not at the expense of children)

No. I believe it has to do with the greater richness of motion involved. Writing a letter involves more effort and a specific motion of the hand for each letter and these are different for each letter (pushing keys on a keyboard is largely undifferentiated; what really varies is the position the fingers have to go, not the motion needed to produce a character which is the same). This, I think, exploits spatial memory as well (note how mnemonic devices like the method of loci work).

That does matter! A Stanford study on brain computer interface implants found that 'mentally handwriting' instead of 'mentally typing' was more than twice as fast, in some cases over triple. Because of those different motions/patterns for each letter.

>https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/05/software-turn...

That's an argument for learning how to print though (which I agree is necessary) rather than learning cursive.

All the forms I ever had to fill were in block letters. In fact as a kid we only learned cursive so I wasn't used to writing in block letters when filling in forms which was weird.

Are people referring to cursive as any type of manual writing?

You use both. Commonly referred to as printing and cursive. First, you learn to print, then you lean cursive.

Lately, people have been calling printing "manuscript", which is either silly or an attempt to dignify it.

Nowadays, some say, why learn handwriting? Why learn arithmetic? We have calculators and keyboards, after all.

It's sad, but there will be a revival someday.

Writing is an entirely different mental process. I find that I remember things far better if I write them on paper instead of in a text file. If anything, schools should go the opposite route and be as computer/tablet free as possible. I suspect the richer ones will.

This would be a better thought out argument if I weren't typing it from the toilet.

With that attitude, why bother even teaching them to type? Only nerds use keyboards any more, Grandpa - everything these days happens on a phone.

Much less meaningful work happens on a phone than on an actual computer, at a keyboard.

This isn't true of handwriting vs. typing.

Generally this is true, but I'd say that for certain endeavors, like math, more meaningful work happens in handwriting. True as well for various kinds of planning or brainstorming, etc.

Also, definitely more volume of work happens on a computer at a keyboard. How meaningful it is is debatable. Recent events have shown what I believe Orwell said long ago, that most of what we write is just mindless concatenation of premade phrases. Computers make that easier, but it's not obvious that that activity is where the meaning comes in to work

>... Orwell said long ago, that most of what we write is just mindless concatenation of premade phrases.

That sounds really interesting, but my Google-fu failed me here; what is the full quote?

Here is one - I thought I remembered another essay where he said something similar as well, where he was discussing jargon, but I didn't find it yet (or I'm remembering wrong and this is the only quote)

  modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

ChatGPT, he saw it coming.

Considering this, it's no surprise that ChatGPT seems so threatening to much of the publishing industry.

Because handwriting only requires a pencil or pen, and a medium to write on such as paper.

Contrast typing which requires an entire machine instead of a simple pencil or pen.

Note that as far as I'm concerned handwriting is different from cursive. We should absolutely teach kids how to write by hand. Teaching cursive as part of general curriculum, however, is a waste of time. Cursive is better relegated to being a hobby.

Except that it's a lot faster, especially if you let it degrade to a scrawl that only you can read.

Cursive has a single real use these days: signatures.

I had people insisting I had to learn cursive up until 6th grade and it magically stopped. I always felt I was hiding something until about right at this moment.

Have you seen how a lot of people sign their names these days? I won't say I quite just make an X but it's close.

Signatures have no rules, cursive is not needed.

I had a big argument at a DMV about that. The supervisor would not accept my signature, because he couldn't read it. I finally signed using a Palmer script and he said, "Why didn't you use that the first time?" I pointed out that my signature was my signature, and was on my bank accounts, etc.

So I went around for five years with two signatures on my license.

I disagree. I'm writing on paper almost daily, for three different type of tasks: journaling, writing and language learning. The physical act of writing and contact with paper somehow appease my mind a bit when journaling in a way typing doesn't. For writing (scientific or one of the book I'm working one), I start on paper first if I want to reach quality. I also sometimes do handwritten revisions on printed paper instead of using only computer. Finally when learning another alphabet (now Thai) or language (Thai and Sumerian currently), I find it easier to memorize content by writing letters and words.

But do you write in the sort of cursive taught to elementary school kids?

Yes of course, how else would I write? Stopping after each letter and writing them like printed font? I saw some people doing this (especially in East-Asian where people aren't taught proper handwriting for English) and this is madness. No wonder handwriting is so slow and painful to these people.

I started using a fountain pen early in college, and have never gone back. It takes such a light touch that handwriting is easy and quick. If you have shitty pens, cursive makes a lot of sense to minimize the chance of an RSI. With high-quality gel pens or a fountain pen, either script or print is painless.

Getty-Dubay Italic https://handwritingsuccess.com/handwriting/

Well, kinda like this but more cursive as it has more joins. It's indeed the style I learned at school.

The kind of cursive that I was taught as a kid and that has fallen out of favor is either the Zaner-Bloser Method, the Palmer Method, or its derivative the D'Nealian. All of these have very similar looping cursive letters, the only differences are the style of the block letters and the method of transitioning from them to cursive.

A bit of trivia: the joined letters of cursive were developed in response to the limitations of the feather quill. It was important to keep the nib in contact with the paper at all times to avoid splattering and other faults. Today the only reason to keep joins is efficiency, but the other flourishes of old-fashioned cursive are less important.

So it is useful to you, not most.

Most people outside of the USA and the UK have to learn at least one non-native language: English.

I didn't learn english by handwritting it.

I'm with you. I'm quite successful by any measure and my handwriting is atrocious. My mum would do home handwriting assignments with her left hand for me so I could play and explore nature (we lived in a rural place).

I doubt I'd be any more advanced in my life if my handwriting were better. In fact, looking back at the kids in school I know with beautiful handwriting and the ones who were messy, I don't see any real correlation. It's pretty random.

Because you sometimes need to be able to put words to a surface.

I hike, often remote and alone. One of the many safety precautions I take is leaving a whiteboard on my dash with my destination and the date. Anyone seeing that will immediately know whether there's a problem. (And there's label tape on there with a bunch of contact information, including the satellite equipment I'm carrying.)

Handwriting in cursive with a fountain pen is a pleasure, not a chore.

I use a simple pelikan jazz (nothing fancy) but still it’s pleasant.

Indeed. Going back to a ballpoint pen feels awkward, disorienting, and ham-fisted.

I'm using 10€ Waterman I bought 15 years ago and life would feel different if I ever lose it. The price of ink in Japanese was always a bother to me, so I hoarded cartridges wherever I traveled home. I got a Parker at Christmas once but never really used it because of the feel of it plus the very expensive price of ink; also way too heavy.

Because you don't want to be illiterate without the support of a computer!

If that were the definition of illiterate, we'd say that people who lose control of their dominant hand, or whose pencil just broke are illiterate.

Pencils can be replaced, and the handwriting skill is not that difficult to transfer to the non-dominant hand.

We did both in school in the late 90s. We had "computer" class 2-3 times a week where we learned touch typing, as well as "penmanship" where we learned print and cursive handwriting.

Based.

I write by hand so rarely now that it hurts my hand to do. (And I was in the cursive cohort. Pretty useless skill in retrospect lol. It's just a way less legible version of regular handwriting.)

I learned Palmer script. It was always my worst class in grade school. But I can look through years of notes and see it steadily deteriorate to the point that I really can't do cursive any longer (and yes, it hurts my hand to do it for anything beyond a minimal period).

If you want to learn to write in a way that isn't painful, learn to use a fountain pen - a $20 Pilot Metropolitan, or a Lamy Safari for I believe about the same, will do more than well enough.

Pencils and ballpoints, and to a lesser but real extent most rollerballs, require so much force to mark the paper that you can't help getting a cramp. Fountain pen ink is thinner and flows more easily, so all you have to do is steer the pen. This makes a very significant difference.

Don't start with a gold-nibbed pen - both of those I named use steel. Gold admittedly feels nicer to use, but you need the transitional step to learn better habits; steel is much more forgiving of excess force, and you'll know on your own when you're ready for a more delicate and expressive nib.

I used to hate to write longhand, too. I've been using fountain pens for about half a decade now. A few days ago I used one to work out a complex idea over eight A5 pages with no need to pause save occasionally for thought, and my wrist wasn't sore afterward. Here as elsewhere, choosing the proper tool makes all the difference.

My grade school did indeed require the use of fountain pens at one point. Didn't help and probably ruined a few shirts.

These days I mostly use fairly cheap gel pens. I actually prefer them in general to some more expensive pens I own.

@ghaff Check out cheap, disposable Pilot Varsity fountain pens. Quite good for what they are.

Maybe I will. But these days I also just write too quickly for fountain pens. Thanks.

Cursive is faster than print, but I'm less sure that the cost/benefit is there.

Your comment reads like you are using voice dictation, which is much on point! (Sans typos)

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