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Comment by walrus01 | Hacker News Reader

I'm quite a bit older than you, old enough that I remember learning to touch type in elementary school on Apple IIe and IIgs desktop computers. It's not reasonable these days to expect people to hand write a 4, 6, 8 page length essay on paper and pen with a finite time limit in a classroom. Being able to edit and revise things in a word processor type interface is an essential part of writing an academic paper.

Additionally expecting whoever is reading the paper to comprehend everyone's (likely very sloppy, in this era) handwriting is an exercise in frustration for the person who would be evaluating the papers.

Not that tests/exams can't be given on paper, ever (multiple choice still works), but for something where people are expected to provide multiple pages of coherently written essay output, I would struggle to do it by hand. And I'm old enough that we did do a lot purely on paper when I was in school.

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My child's high school is doing the same thing: all exams are now handwritten on paper in a supervised room. Phones and smartwatches are always banned during the school day, but laptops are banned during exams. This is standard at state-funded high schools in Australia.

There will likely be a period where those who went through high school with computers struggle with hand writing stuff, but the next generation will have done it all their lives.

> I would struggle to do it by hand.

If you did it before then, barring physical limitations which have occurred since then, you would struggle for a short while and then you would be fine. I also did coursework purely on paper, got out of practice, and then once my kids were in school got back into the habit of handwriting. I can even write cursive again. Cursive makes it much easier on the hand and wrist. There's a reason it was invented. :)

> Cursive makes it much easier on the hand and wrist.

For righties.

I'm left handed. It's still easier than print for me.

You can write cursive left-handed just fine, slanting letters the other way helps.

I'm right-handed, but I had to learn left-handed cursive at school when I spent 5 months with a cast on my right hand.

Being left-handed I've done left-handed cursive for far more than 5 months. I pushed myself to also try and learn to write right-handed. In a left-to-right writing style, its more than just slanting the letters slightly the other way. In the end, the right-hander is overall dragging the pen across the page while the lefty is overall pushing the pen across the page.

It's not about the difficulty of writing, it's about the difficulty of cutting and pasting text with a knife and glue versus a text editor.

I have never been able to handwrite well and my family suspects I have dysgraphia. I can write, but slowly and unreadably. But I can type over 160 wpm. Typing for me is strictly superior, probably by an order of magnitude.

It’s rather peculiar that people are downvoting somebody sharing their perfectly valid perspective..

I'm used to it

> barring physical limitations

I think you're missing the point. This is a physical limitation. People don't write as much as they used to. I used to be able to write for hours, taking notes, writing papers, etc... Now, I try to take notes during a meeting and my hand cramps. And as a bonus, my handwriting never was great, but now it's illegible for me.

Yes, we all "could" re-learn this skill, but how many people will? If you asked me to type a paper on a locked-down computer, I could easily. If you asked me to write a 2000 word paper by hand in an hour, I doubt it would happen.

If we expect students to take in-person tests on paper, then you should also do the rest of the classwork on paper. I am completely in the camp that we learn more when we write something. The physical act is part of the learning process. But you can't expect students to write an in-depth exam without having the practice of doing it often.

> Now, I try to take notes during a meeting and my hand cramps. And as a bonus, my handwriting never was great, but now it's illegible for me.

Are you using a fountain pen, writing cursive and do you take care to hold it properly? Those three things fixed all my cramps

From what I recall, doing handwritten CS exams in 2004, you aren't writing long essays. Long form was the course work. The exam was short form answers and it did not stress my writing hand. The one with most writing was the natural language exam (an extinct subject I should think) and I felt more time worry over having to flip back and forth between pages to cross reference than time spent writing.

> It's not reasonable these days to expect people to hand write a 4, 6, 8 page length essay on paper and pen with a finite time limit in a classroom.

Say what? Writing by hand is not only useful to write. It helps practice fine motor control. Something you need in many places in life, and most people have no practice of other than by writing.

Or we can just require school to actually, you know, teach people how to write?

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