As a graphologist, I am always appalled by the decreasing interest in handwriting. Schools, especially in the United States, spend less time teaching it as if it were doomed to disappear from our digital society.
As a result, we see more and more children and even adults unable to write correctly. Too often, they don’t even know how to hold their pen.
I have already written articles and a book on this subject to raise awareness and help solve these difficulties. But I think it is necessary to keep hammering the nail.
So here are five reasons to keep learning to handwrite:
1. Handwriting develops fine motor skills
Handwriting develops critical fine motor skills and the coordination needed to control precise movements. These movements are required to conduct everyday school and work-related activities.
2. It helps you remember
Handwriting has important cognitive benefits. Research suggests traditional pen-and-paper notes are remembered better.
Moreover, learning to read and handwrite are linked. Students become better readers through practicing writing and vice versa.
3. It’s good for wellbeing
Handwriting, and related activities such as drawing and doodling, are tactile, creative, and reflective sources of pleasure for writers of all ages. Try it if you don’t believe me!
4. It’s very accessible
Handwriting does not need electricity, devices, batteries, a fast internet connection, a keyboard, or the many other things on which digital writing depends.
It only needs a pen and paper. And can be done anywhere.
5. It’s about thinking
Learning to write and learning to think are intimately connected.
Ideas are formed as students write. They are developed and organized as they are composed. Thinking is too important to be outsourced to bots!
And more importantly:
Our handwriting is unique and reflects our personality. And we can’t deny the creative pleasure we get from forging our own personalized letters and inventing the unique seal that our signature represents.
When we write by hand we offer a vibrant personal trace of ourselves, unlike the cold, uniform letters of a typed message.
Even without being handwriting experts, we can all feel the lively emotions expressed through handwriting compared to lifeless typed text.
But what about the threat of AI?
Will handwriting vanish completely in a world dominated by AI and robots?
I hope this vision of the future is just science fiction. But the rise of generative artificial intelligence means bots can now write human-quality text without even having hands.
And with the use of speech-to-text, even humans don’t need any tools to put down their thoughts. What will “write” mean when with help from AI, text will be generated by decoders that read brain activity through non-invasive scanning?
Nevertheless, handwriting may regain its importance if tests and exams have to be handwritten again to stop students from using generative AI to cheat. What an ironic comeback that would be!
To conclude, I don’t know if AI will make handwriting disappear soon, but I can tell you that we, human beings, still need to learn to write by hand.
Oh, good heavens, of COURSE! Though I had no understanding of it when we brought our daughters to a K-5th grade Montessori program in the early 1990s, I've since become a complete convert: All children learned to write "cursive" before they learned to print.
This seemed crazy at the time, but over time we could see how sensible they were. Cursive is more natural to the hand and actually easier to write. They started with sandpaper letters as toddlers.
Kids worked hard on their penmanship because they were rewarded with a fountain pen for their success. (Imagine that!) I'd love to pull true Montessorians into this conversation and better yet bring their world views into curriculum development for more classrooms in more public schools everywhere.