In a post for the National Post, Andrew Coyne discusses the recent drop in students’ ability to write long-hand, and the potential harms that this could bring. Here is an extract:
Typing is file retrieval, remembering where a letter is. With handwriting, you create the letters anew each time, using much more complex motor skills. Whether it’s the flowing motion of the arm, or the feel of the page under your hand, or the aesthetic satisfaction of a well-turned “f”, it seems to engage the more intuitive, right-brain aspects of cognition.
Handwriting forces us to make an investment. The words are there on the page; we can’t change them, except to scratch them out. It inclines us thus to compose the sentence in our heads first — and the sort of sentence you can compose and keep in your head is likely to be shorter and clearer than otherwise. Your readers will generally thank you.
For the full post, visit bit.ly/11DaXte.
