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The Trouble with Handwriting

Is cursive important anymore? By dismissing handwriting, we diminish student confidence and fluency and risk dire consequences for skills in other areas.

By Douglas Reeves

Of all the issues that policy-makers and educational leaders should have to worry about, handwriting ought to be far down the list. Budget, personnel, and preparing students for the 21st century surely ought to be more important than one of the oldest forms of communication known to mankind.

But before we dismiss handwriting and the arguments surrounding it, it is worth considering both research and practical experience to inform decisions on this topic in your system.

I will do my best to present both sides of a challenging and contentious issue and encourage reader similarly to engage other leaders, educators, and parents in a meaningful dialogue on this subject.

EMOTIONAL CONTEXT

The debate about handwriting approaches the emotional tenor of debates about corporal punishment and grading policies. Parents, teachers, and even casual observers of educational policy can suddenly let disagreement turn into rage, as education writer Anne Trubek has testified.

Trubek had argued on MSN.com that schools should stop teaching cursive in primary schools and received more than 2,000 comments, including some that took a reasoned stance in opposition. However, many were, as Trubek described them, hostile, insulting, and vehement.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Handwriting has been in our intellectual toolbox for about 6,000 years, with the printing press occupying a scant half millennia and computerized fonts only a few decades of that relatively short spectrum of human history.

But what incredible impact writing has had, allowing the documentation of laws from the Code of Hammurabi to the Magna Carta to the U.S. Constitution. Even as the printing press and computer-driven printers dominated our written discourse in recent years, international peace treaties, new laws, and most (though by no means all) commercial contracts continued to be executed in pen and ink.

Handwriting once occupied a central place in the school curriculum. Perhaps a few readers will remember the Palmer Method, which required careful copying of letter outlines for page after page. While no one would confuse making perfectly formed letters with crafting a perfect sentence, there was general agreement the second skill depended upon the first.

However, by the end of the 20th century, Palmer’s cursive or, for that matter, any other method of handwriting, had largely given way to whatever printed letters the student could manage. As standardized testing expanded dramatically in the early 21st century, the ability of a student to draw bubbles became more important than letters.

For those few states that required student writing as part of the standardized tests, scorers were explicitly instructed to focus on content of the sentences and not the care or skill with which the letters were formed.

TIME ON TASK

A recent U.S. Department of Education study found that 90 percent of teachers spent just 10 minutes a day on handwriting. One popular handwriting curriculum, Trubek reports, recommends that schools increase the time devoted to handwriting to a total of 15 minutes each day. There is no other skill, from basketball to videogames to reading, that we would rationally expect to take a student from a novice level to proficiency in just 10 to 15 minutes per day.

Time is a scarce resource in schools. Every minute devoted to the practice and development of one skill cannot be devoted to another. If test scores, and, by implication, the job security of teachers and administrators, depend upon student skill in reading comprehension and math, not handwriting, then many people would challenge even the paltry 15 minutes allocated to handwriting.

This reasoning is tempting, but it is wrong. By diminishing handwriting, we diminish student confidence and fluency in writing. And when we diminish student writing, we risk catastrophic consequences for student skills in reading comprehension, math, science, social studies, and interpersonal communication.

Just as skills in keyboarding, Web design, and oral communication open the door of opportunity for students, so do handwriting skills. Students need multiple methods of communication in the 21st century. Each of these skills requires the care and attention of teachers, parents, and students.

AN ACADEMIC LEVER

Steve Graham of Vanderbilt University is a leading scholar on the relationship between student writing and academic success. Graham argues that writing is a skill that requires not only an emphasis on the quality of the work produced, but also the quantity of work precedes the attainment of quality.

If students are afraid to practice in sports, for example, then they will never develop the skills necessary to play the game. It doesn’t take many times for a student to be hit unexpectedly with a soccer ball for one of two things to happen. Ideally, peers and coaches will help the student to develop skills that will avoid unintentional contact with the ball. But there is another possibility: The student simply quits playing the game.

When students make this choice, they can no doubt find other profitable things to do with their time—perhaps read in the library or enjoy the company of friends. But their failure to practice, or even attempt to practice, will guarantee that their skills in kicking, passing, and defense will never be developed.

Putting aside for a moment the values of good sportsmanship and an active lifestyle that consistent engagement in healthy sports might provide, I am not lobbying to make soccer a mandatory part of the curriculum.

I am, however, not going to give up without a fight on the subject of writing. When students get the message that “I’m just not a good writer,” they are not merely going to stop handwriting, but evidence strongly suggests that they also stop writing.

Graham’s evidence suggests that if we expect students to write paragraphs, then they first must write sentences; and if we expect them to write sentences, then they first must write letters. In brief, fluency in handwriting is inextricably linked to fluency in written expression.

If you think that I am exaggerating the link between handwriting and written expression, then here are two experiments that you might consider. First, get a job application from three local employers. If your students want to work, they must fill out simple applications. Ask classroom teachers to give you just five minutes to have students, without using their real names, to complete the forms. Then imagine that you are the hiring manager trying to select the person to whom you will offer the summer job, and decide if writing letters is that different from written expression.

Second, ask students to imagine that they have received a $10,000 scholarship to the college or technical school of their choice. Ask them to write a half- page thank-you note to the donor of the scholarship. Then imagine handing these thank-you notes to the donor and asking for a renewal of the scholarship fund.

Am I equating writing with penmanship? You be the judge. Consider if, as in Graham’s experiments, readers attribute traits of intelligence and character to those who take the time and care to write neatly. It may not be fair, but it is reality. We should not expect employers, scholarship donors, or college admissions officers to go to extra lengths to understand the hieroglyphics of our children’s written expression. Rather, we should expect them to write so that their audience can understand them.

Graham considers more than a century of scientific evidence that demonstrates that teaching handwriting enhances legibility and fluency. My own research on the subject revealed a direct relationship between the frequency and quality of student writing and student results in math, science, and social studies.

WRITING ALWAYS COUNTS

Improved student writing will not result from administrative demands to expand an already overcrowded language arts curriculum. In the best examples of deep implementation of effective writing programs, schools take advantage of opportunities for student writing in every class, every grade, every subject.

The entries on the charts in the fitness classes are as important a form of communication as the lab report in science and the graphs in math. Beware the advocates of 21st century skills who complain that writing is no longer relevant. Students, factory workers, professionals, and families will continue to need to communicate, a need at the core of what it means to be human. Our decisions about writing will either enhance or diminish the capabilities of our children to communicate.

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