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Comment by tialys | Hacker News Reader

I'm 18 years old, and I live and die on my computer day in and day out. And yet, for all of my college classes I take notes with pen and paper. It's insane to think that a child would be able to get by in school without decent handwriting skills. Maybe in 20 years, but certainly not yet. That said, the asinine emphasis on 'cursive' handwriting I got for two years makes me cringe every time I think about it. That time could have been much better spent on things that I might actually use in real life.

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Define: "decent handwriting skills". For instance, if I never learned how to write a G "correctly", I could still take notes and do just fine in the rest of my life. Teaching that "skill" is a waste of time. Handwriting learned on your own would be good enough for your purposes. Communcations with other people today requires a separate set of skills - typing, writing, speaking, even debating - that aren't taught enough. Instruction in handwriting is a waste of precious time - developmentally and socially - when there are better alternatives.

This is stupid. There is a correct way to write a G. That's how the alphabet looks. Yes you can stylize it but it has to generally fit the mold of the G. If you were using a different alphabet, you would have to learn how to write the letters/symbols of it.

You are arguing against teaching people the alphabet basically.

No, I'm against wasting public resources on marginalized skills while teaching kids that learning is about boring you to death. How many of us have sloppy handwriting and after how many hours of us being "taught"? Handwriting today is much more often for personal use. My handwriting is good enough if I can read it.

Teach typing instead. The child will learn a much more useful skill and with many more applications. They'll pick up handwriting as necessary (just as they do typing now). Invert the priorities.

There is as much reason to teach typing as there is a reason to teach a class in how to use the XBox controller. Nobody under the age of 25 has any trouble learning how to type.

I don't know if handwriting is or isn't a big deal. I don't remember having to do it after kindergarten. 3rd grade seems a bit too old, perhaps the author is really just embarrassed her kid is still failing the slow kid's class?

It would be interesting to see what would happen to society if handwriting class was abolished. Home Economics and running at recess were tossed out and now everyone is obese and in debt.

Nobody under the age of 25 has any trouble learning how to type.

Hmm, I don't know about you, but about 4-5 years ago when I learned to type it was pretty difficult. It took me a year school classes to get up to 40 wpm.

And recently I started re-learning how to type - using Colemak. But it's significantly easier, since I already have the finger dexterity. Either way, I think that your exaggeration is slightly too much. For younger kids, learning to type isn't as easy as you seem to think it is. (And most of the people I know now only type at 50, maybe 60 wpm - had they been taught earlier and with more emphasis, they might be typing at 100 or 120.)

No causation - compare situation in other countries.

Aren't you blowing this out of proportions? As far as I remember, handwriting was a part of the first year of elementary school, along with learning to read. It's not like pupils have to spend endless hours on it, year after year.

Where I went to school (Germany), there was a mark for "good handwriting" throughout grammar school, but it did not have any significance (no bearing on you being eligible to go to a higher school). It was meant to encourage you to be tidy. I always had the worst possible mark in that "subject" - whatever. I also don't think there were any further courses on handwriting. It is useful, though, if teachers try to teach you some good habits for keeping notes (like the girls all using a ruler to underline stuff...).

In the U.S., when I went to elementary school in the early 80's, there were multiple years devoted to handwriting - first print then cursive. But even one year is too many, especially because that is endless hours. It sounds like things haven't changed.

But how would you give lessons at school without pupils being able to write?

Typing. Start with big keys that make phonetic sounds. Shoot, Fisher Price has this:

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=5716931

at Wal-Mart for two year olds! And it's twenty bucks.

Then by second grade teach touch typing. It's such a fundamental skill, there's no good reason not to start when kids start formal school, if not before. I've done one study with kids as young as four and most clearly knew how to use a mouse and keyboard.

I don't think typing would be as efficient, to be honest. What if there are diagrams that need comments? In general, what if some graphical structure to the text is needed (like bubbles around words pointing to other bubbles, and so on). Getting a text to look right can get complicated fast on a computer. Maybe with pure words per minute, you can do better with a typewriter than with writing, but I remain doubtful concerning typical lecture notes.

Not that I wouldn't have liked to learn typing at school.

Edit: my question was not "what would you teach instead of handwriting", the question was how to teach the other stuff without handwriting, that is, how are pupils supposed to take note. Surely you are not suggesting they take notes with the fisher price toy?

Seriously, you're suggesting that kids need to be formally taught how to draw? You don't think they can copy something that's printed on the chalkboard? And you don't think kids would learn to write on their own? Didn't we learn to type that way?

All I'm talking about is inverting the priorities, especially for young kids. Four and five year olds aren't expected to take notes. The stuff you're worrying about mostly comes later. And then, just like now with typing, they will know what they need to even without formal education shoving it down their throats. When did you learn to take notes? I don't think it was expected of me until 6th or 7th grade, if then.

I don't recall spending so much time on learning how to write. I remember we had a book with the cursive letters in big that we were supposed to follow with out pencils a couple of times. One of the first homework assignments I really hated, consequently, my handwriting was always ugly.

But yes, I think kids need to be taught how to write, they don't just learn it by copying from the board. Or maybe they would eventually, but it would take longer. With your argument, why have school at all, why not let kids learn everything by themselves.

Also, I wish there was more emphasis in school on learning how to structure thoughts (on paper or elsewhere). The few bits on handwriting, underlining headlines and so on are among the few lessons where this aspects play a role - most other stuff really is just copying stuff from the board and learning it by heart.

five year olds also need to take notes, for example write down tomorrows homework assignment. Of course you could put the assignments on a web site so that kids could look them up online instead - but I think that would produce a much higher workload for teachers.

"With your argument, why have school at all, why not let kids learn everything by themselves."

That's not my argument. I want schools to focus on critical skills, especially during early childhood. Handwriting, today, isn't one of them. Teach kids to type. Penmanship can come later, like typing today. Invert the priorites to match real world demands. Kids are already typing and using computers any ways.

I don't ever remember taking notes in elementary school. Assignments were handed out and completed. They could just as easily be emailed out and typed in. Problem is, the kids are probably more computer literate than most teachers.

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