Recently a friend posted a link to an
article about the controversy of whether cursive writing should still be taught in schools. There are some experts who would like to call attention to the role of handwriting in the overall learning process, while others would as soon see kids move on to keyboarding as soon as possible in keeping with the 'technological age'. I believe that writing isn't just about
writing, and I'm glad to see there are experts to explain why.
I have nothing scientific on which to base my opinions, but I do have theories about why it's critical that students who are physically able to write
should write, at least part of the time. I think there is an important connection made between the pencil and the brain that shouldn't be overlooked. Girlie has struggled with writing from the very beginning. She is dyspraxic, and the act of writing requires so much concentration there is little left over for anything else - such as remembering the question she is supposed to be answering. In the last two years she has made incredible progress with the help of her occupational therapist and, I'd like to think, some methods we thought of and put in practice.
When Girlie started third grade she had a 1:1 paraeducator, and with the increase in curriculum and writing requirements it was decided that most of her work would be scribed. At that point, the IEP team decided to increase the amount of keyboarding instruction in the hope that she would be able to do more of her work independently. Besides the physical difficulty with writing, the area in which she struggled the most was math, so that by the time she completed fifth grade she was working at about a mid-fourth grade level. Dearest and I asked to have her enrolled in summer school followed by an extra math session (which made it a short summer for her; she had only about three weeks of summer vacation) and she gained nearly a year of math skills!
When Girlie was in sixth grade, something that I'd been thinking about kept coming to surface, but I didn't know how to articulate what I was thinking, and hadn't read anything about it. We noticed that if she watched us write her math, she could sometimes verbalize what should be done, but only with prompts and rarely by just looking at the problem in the book. If we left her alone to do the writing on a shortened assignment by herself, she either didn't do it at all or did most of it wrong.
I decided to start reading every math problem to Girlie and tell her what to write to set up the problem. It seemed as though two things happened: when she was told exactly what to write
one step at a time (e.g. "Write the number 42. Now write the number 3 underneath it. Now multiply; what is 3 times 2? OK, write 6."), she didn't struggle as much or get caught up in the physically challenging act of writing. The other thing that appeared to be happening is that the math, traveling up through the pencil and into her brain, started to make sense. During the sixth grade year she moved from special ed math to grade level math with a 'booster' class. This year, she is in a regular seventh grade math class and rarely has her assignments modified. When she has math homework, she usually completes it independently.
From my own perspective, I notice the connection between the paper and my brain in my professional life when I take meeting minutes. Over the years I've noticed more and more people use a laptop to take minutes during the meeting, and I kept wondering: does it automatically simplify and streamline the transcription process? No - in fact, I sometimes have a very difficult time remembering contextual details if I missed anything, because I find I can type almost mindlessly and not pay attention! Conversely, when I'm handwriting the notes what ends up on paper is very terse and probably wouldn't make much sense to others, but when I transcribe from my notes I have complete - often word for word - recall.
Some kinesthetic connection is being made, and I'm certain that not everyone learns that way, but it's clear that Girlie
needs to write to understand, at least in math. We could look at it this way: it won't be a detriment to anyone to keep teaching handwriting - both printing and cursive - in school. On the other hand, it might impede learning for those who would otherwise perform better in other subjects if they learn more efficiently by writing. Just my two cents... :-)
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