Penmanship vs. keyboarding in school

In My Humble Opinion
21

Omniscient, despite the fact that you explictely mention single parent households, you seem to regard parental time and attention to be univerally available to all kids as well.

I’m very conerned about children whose parents don’t take an active role in their education, either because the do not have the time, the education, the energy, or the desire to do so. I’d like to see all kids get the fundamentals in school, rather than hope that every kid has a parent or another adult willing to sit down with him and practice handwriting and spelling and other basics.

I can see how surfing the internet and using a digital camera and other, more specialized technical equipment (what the hell is a CNC machine?) can be enriching educational experiences, but I would prefer that they take a back seat to learning the skills that every person needs to have.

IANAP, of course. I would just like society to be filled with literate people who have a good grasp basic arithmetic, and since the state cannot mandate that parents must teach their children, the best way is to mandate that these things be taught in school.

22

Again, loss of fine points, Omniscient. I can only respond that having kids sometimes makes it difficult to accept deficiencies that affect your children, in the hopes that they reflect systemmic aspects that assist less fortunate kids. Also frustrating when you choose to move to an area that supposedly strives to have the best schools possible, and you pay a hefty tax bill in support.

As far as the schools themselves are concerned, I suspect my kids would do well in just about any schools. Just about the worst suburban high school is at least as good as the Chicago Public grade and high schools I attended.

Societally, I think I would tend to agree with Podkayne. I’d rather assure that the greater percentage learn the basics in school, than hope that the schools inspire the few.

Often you see “technology” offered as a panacea in schools. And at an extremely young age. For example, our grade school has computers in every room - including the kindergarten. But our schools do not offer foreign language until 6th grade. I have never seen a study hinting that computer use is something best learned while young. But my understanding is that it is pretty much accepted fact that very young kids are uniquely able to grasp foreign languages. Music and art are other subjects I feel the schools are able to teach, that may be beyond the grasp of many students. But I’m certainly getting far afiled from my OP.

Finally, to some extent your system-wide concerns weaken when schools are primarily funded on a local level, as in Illinois. Not sure what the situation is in Plainfield, but I don’t think it has huge numbers of impoverished or immigrant families. In Glen Ellyn and Naperville, you have a pretty wealthy and educated population.

Podkayne - CNC refers to computer controlled machining equipment. I could actually bore you to some length - this is what a couple of my best golfing and drinking buddies do. As a lawyer, I get a kick out of occasionally hanging with folk who actually have valuable skills and will be of some use after the holocaust. :wink:

23

Well, I don’t think there is any confusion on where we stand on opposite sides of this issue. It all falls into what I see as a Catch 22. In that dilemma, I think the opportunity cost (e.g. marginalizing to a degree penmanship or keyboarding) of teaching these sometimes esoteric and often scattered technology driven lessons is well worth it. I think your opinion is conservative to a fault. Let the bureaucracy do its job and find a reasonable middle ground.

One new arguement that I think might help to marginalize the importance of teaching penmanship in early schooling. I had excellent penmanship in grade school, and maintained it somewhat through High School. In my years of schooling, penmanship and cursive were very heavily taught. I always had A’s, and was scrawling cursive before it was approached in school thanks to my father teaching me how to write my own signiture. Now however, after having been molded into the modern working world I do nearly everything on a keyboard. I haven’t used cursive for anything other than checks and legal documents since junior high. I rarely print since leaving college, and as a result my penmanship has become very average. If I try and go real slow, I can write with lovely symetry, but in a day-to-day circumstance, my handwriting isn’t what one would consider ideal.

OK, so based on the above anecdote, I’d argue that time spent to teach me penmanship was a substantial waste because the lack of use in modern soceity has allowed all it to wither away. What strong arguement is there to spend long periods of class time teaching a skill that will degrade after school? Is it really that important if I have become reasonably successful, yet used it so little that its become what you would consider embarassing?

I think many of the older people in this thread realize how much they use their penmanship, not how much the next generation will use it. Its by no means archaic, but certainly not as critical as spelling, grammar, or algebra like you’ve all implied.

24

On the contrary, I was reacting to what you said:

I realize upon rereading that most of your remarks did focus on penmanship vs. technology, but I’m glad that you seem to agree that many basics, like spelling, grammar and math, are the legitimate purview of the school, and that all the boring basics should not be left to the parents.

I don’t think that so much time is spent on handwriting that it cuts into kids’ opportunities to learn other things. . . based on other comments in this thread, it seems like the students are getting precious little handwriting instruction. But, I don’t have kids, I’m not involved in K-12 eduction, etc, etc, etc, so MHO is probably worth about 1.38 cents. :slight_smile:

I can’t argue against what you’ve said about the persistence of good handwriting. Despite all the drilling I got in ye olde classical public education, by the end of college, the only thing I wrote (in script, I mean, not problem sets) was lecture notes, which were barely legible to anyone else. That’s why I started working on making it better.

25

I often have a similar discussion with my wife concerning the relative merits and future of handwriting and keyboarding. I think that as technology develops, lap and palm tops will be more pervasive. For example, above I mentioned a movie that showed law students all using laptops to take notes in class. My wife has taught business law at a community college for 10 years, and says she has never had a student bring a laptop to class for note taking.

Personally, I use a computer as much as possible - but I always have one within easy reach at work. I know handwritins is no substitute as far as taking notes of meetings, conference calls, etc. If you take notes on a computer, within minutes you can work them into minutes to be sent to the participants for comment. And you can easily manipulate the info should you need to work up a progress memo or any such thing in the future. Handwritten notes clearly are not as manipulable.

Looking at the economics, you could buy enough paper and pens to keep notes for a semester’s worth of classes for a couple of bucks. Not so a computer. Of course, if you already own a computer for other purposes… You also have the question of battery reliability and access to outlets. I do not know whatt the future holds. Will computers become so cheap that they are as common as calculators? Will workstations be hardwired into classrooms? It would involve considerable expense.

Also, my OP suggested that the kids should be taught either writing or keyboarding. While legibility is one concern in writing, I feel speed is as if not more important. Especially in such things as taking notes or doing homework. Many posts ago I acknowledged Podkayne’s idea that proper cursive is not necessarily necessary.

Also, have a couple of kids and you will be surprised at the number of skills and amount of knowledge you had in school that has since atrophied. And each individual has to decide for themselves the extent to which they let their skills erode. Do you routinely use a calculator to do basic math, or do you take the opportunity to flex those neurons? Just because you use a computer a lot, doesn’t mean you cannot write a letter or two, or pen a note inside your Christmas cards.

OTOH, I have often heard that the very act of handwriting in some ways reinforces the retention of material. For example, if you take notes while listening, you will have better retention than if you simply listen intently, even if you never look at your notes again. I have never heard of a study saying that computer notetaking reinforces material in the same way. I’m not saying it doesn’t, just that I personally have never seen the supporting data.

Thanks for the interesting discussion. I wish more people would check in with their views/experiences.

26

There are people of the opinion that keyboarding is also obsolete, or fast becoming so, because you can talk to your computer and it can talk to you. So why learn to read? If you get a letter by gasp snail mail, rush over to your printer/scanner/fax machine, scan it in, and let the computer tell you what it says.

Since I first started reading this thread, I’ve thought about when I use handwriting. I use it on my grocery list, notes to my husband, letters to everybody, my thank-you letters for my wedding gifts, Christmas cards, my class notes…If I had kids, I could write a note to a teacher excusing my child from class, and I’d know that the teacher could 1) read my legible handwriting and 2) not snicker about how all 30 of his/her students have two parents who are too busy and important to write legibly.

I actually have some friends who write actual letters from time to time, and I rush out to the mail box every day to check for them. I think I get about six per year.

Handwriting matters to me, and so does spelling and punctuation. If I were a teacher, I would resign the day I was told that spelling didn’t matter on a vocabulary test.

Makes me wish for massive electrical power failures, lasting months.

27

I thought the basics of an elementary school curriculum were “reading, writing, and 'rithmetic”

And I understood “writing” to mean the basics of writing well, with correct grammar and style as well as the physical act of writing.

I was taught to print in kindergarten and first grade, and
I had penmanship classes in the third through fifth grades. A fair amount of class time was spent on going over the basic forms of the letters, but the extensive drills were homework - a pretty efficient way of doing it. In high school I took a mandatory typing course - as a consequence I type about 90 words per minute.

It was tedious and grueling at the time, and I use handwriting far less than I type, but still:

a) What else did I really have to do at age 7? At age 15?
b) I’m really glad that I CAN print and write clearly and well, even if I don’t use full cursive.
c) My typing kicks ass, a huge benefit in the world we live in today.

In other words, my (rural Massachusetts) public school gave me the basic skills I needed - in reading, writing, math, science, history, civics, typing, penmanship, telling time, and reading maps. We had computers and machine shop and art and science fairs and home economics and music and all the nifty “extras” that we could pursue to the extent we wished to, but we still graduated with the basics.

Omniscient, you are a computer science guy, right? So OF COURSE keyboarding is much more useful for you now. But aren’t you at least glad you are able to write a check and the occasional thank you note to grandma without it being a Herculean chore?

Even with the proliferation of computers into daily life, we still need basic skills - writing, spelling, the ability to analyze and evaluate information. Many kids don’t have computers at home, won’t have laptops in the classroom in college. Some kids won’t go to college, and will choose careers that never require computers.

Being able to handwrite legible classnotes saved my academic ass in high school and college. The act of writing information DEFINITELY helps in retention. Dinsdale, I’m sad that this is such a chore for your kids, because it’s going to slow them down along the way if they don’t develop the skills now.

Schools are between a rock and a hard place right now (or Scylla and Charbrydis, if you prefer :wink: )- there is pressure to turn out “workers prepared for the 21st century” - there is pressure to take advantage of all the technology and geegaws that will hold kids’ attention, keep money pouring into the schools, and make parents ooh and ah with the amazing things their kids are learning. Sometimes the basics are left behind. Instead of turning out technology savvy humans, why not think about turning out curious, thinking human beings with basic skills?

Penmanship may be “boring” or a “waste of time”, but kids should still learn the basic human skill of writing words on paper. No one is asking them to illuminate the Beatitudes on vellum. And no one will convince me that this is an unnecessary subject for schools.

28

bluethree’s comment about being able to write a teacher a note with legible penmanship and non-laughable grammar forced me to comment on the number of times I read material coming home from school, not just from volunteers in extracurriculars but also from teachers, typed and handwritten, containing what I consider glaring spelling and grammatical errors. I, as many others, tend to be somewhat lax about such things in informal electronic communication. But it amazes me that an educator would send something like this home to parents.

My honest opinion based upon my experience with my three children is that I am not exaggerating isolated examples.

Yes, I deal with language every day in my job. But I do not think it is inappropriate for me to have high expectations of my children’s teachers - whose salaries I contribute several thousand dollars to each year. Moreover, if the stuff I see has such errors, what am I to expect of the stuff going on all day that I do not see?

As long as there are only the few of us here, I might as well go of on another tangent. That is, to what extent are technological developments consumer or industry driven? How much technology does the average consumer need/want?

Last night during either West Wing or Enterprise there was an ad from some electronics company. I wasn’t really paying attention, but the impression I got was it was showing all the neat things their digital cameras could do. Had someone making a neat video of their friends flying. When the ad was over, my wife asked me, "Just how many people do you think want to do that?"

Got me thinking, I don’t max out the camera and computer technology I presently own. I really resent it when technological “advances” make perfectly fine stuff I own obsolete. I could do perfectly well without HDTV, and will not be happy if digital TV makes my TV obsolete before it dies on me. I have 2 computers in my house. I have no urge to go out and buy a new one just because I have the $ to buy one that is far faster and more powerful than either I own. Don’t own a DVD player - able to watch plenty on the VCRs. And my kids waste plenty of time on their N64. Our film cameras serve their purpose. Their purchase price was rather low, and film and processing is relatively cheap. And our preference is to slip the new photos in a purse or pocket to share, or to open up an album, instead of buying a printer or doing a slide show, etc.

I think omniscient makes a very valid point about generational differences. I am 41. For my part, I have little need for a cell phone. I use mine only when I go out and leave my kids at home. Or on family travel. I am happy to be unreachable in my car, etc. Guess my life isn’t so fast-paced that I need immediate access with others and vice versa.

Moreover, I do not appreciate most electronic gear sufficiently that I do not care to climb the learning curve required, and much of it does not come intuitively to me. I’m pretty good at programming my VCRs and they serve my purpose. I have no need or desire to master a new machine. I know how to use my phones in my house, and the cordless ones give me enough mobility. No need for a state of the art cellular that gives me instant messaging, etc.

I guess it won’t be too long before I go the way of the dinos.

29

I want to point out that nowhere within this thread has anyone lessened the importance of spelling, grammar or effective communication skills. Many of you have been somehow combining handwriting with spelling, vocabulary, and grammar.

My point can be summed up to a degree like this. The primary topics covered in second grade (when I was in school) were first penmanship, then spelling and arithmetic, and then grammar and the basics of English. Now, each of these courses occupied the greater part of a quarter. I’d agrue that the emphasis on handwriting should be shifted and they should spend much more time focusing on spelling, grammar and math. Your idea to drill penmanship directly detracts from what I see as vastly more important skills. As it is, the more complex aspects of basic math are pushed back into third grade because of that wasted class time. Cut the time spent on penmanship and you might just create kids who spell better, can add and subtract faster with less than ideal cursive. Personally, I’d hire that guy before the calligraphy major.

30

I think both penmanship and keyboarding should be taught! I wish I had had the chance to take keyboarding earlier, like 6th grade, instead of waiting 'til my junior year of HS. I was still doing penmanship exercises in the 4th grade, even though i do not think that it helped me, it should still be taught. My cursive is moderately horrible!

And I passed keyboarding, but I can hardly type, it is just this four-fingers hunt-and-peck shiznit!

31

IANAParent, but there are probably some ways to make penmanship more recreational. She might enjoy one of those fancy schmancy beginner’s calligraphy kits (I’m sure they probably have Harry Potter ones now, Harry and co. always do their classwork with pen and ink). I remember my mother “let me” (it was framed as a privilege, not a punishment) help her her write and address the Christmas cards each year, especially to those relatives who would appreciate my wobbly handwriting. Or you might let the kids pick out one set of Far Side cards (or whatever is considerably cooler than the cards you pick out) to send to grandparents and their teachers and friends.

This doesn’t really address the OP points about what should be taught in schools. I tend to agree that penmanship is an important skill, and still a valid one. I was dismayed recently because one of my work study students (a college freshman, and a very intelligent young woman) did such a poor job filling out a form at the post office that an important mailing was delayed.

At the college where I work, students are just beginning to bring laptops to class to use for notetaking. I know of some professors who do not allow this. They have several reasons – one, the noise of typing is distracting to them and to other students. However, I suppose the noise of pens scratching is something that we culturally tune out, so perhaps this relates to Omni’s point about the older generation.

Also, several professors have told me that they don’t like the physical set-up of a laptop for note taking. Taking notes with a pen, the student alternates being looking down at their notes, and then up at the professor. With a laptop, the students go from looking down at their keyboard to up at their laptop screen. Again, I suppose it is possible that a student could be such a good typist that they would never look down, thus freeing up time to look at the professor. This is obviously not a formal study of any sort, but the general premise, that a laptop focuses you on the laptop itself, seems reasonable to me. Again, this might be resolved with a laptop with a different design, more like a note pad, but it struck me as interesting.

One more anecdotal story. We have one popular biology professor who is rather young (I point that out to show that he himself was educated with technology more similar to what kids have today) and a very avid technology user. He worked enthusiastically to design a biology course where each student used a laptop. Diagrams and other information were coordinated with his lecture. Students would take less time copying detailed information, and in theory, free up that time to focus on the content that was being discussed. Also, by having diagrams and photos on each laptop, there wouldn’t be any more fuzzy slides, and the students in the back of the classroom would see just as well as the students in the front row. However, he found after four semesters that he noticed a marked drop in the interaction between himself and the students. Most alarmingly, he found that he no longer had the sense (that most good teachers have) when a student was confused or needed more explanation. The average performance of the class remained the same (and he had expected it to increase), but he was putting in more of an effort to get those same results because he had to work harder to engage each student. This was probably a good experiment that will lead to technology being used more effectively in the classroom, but I think it also indicates that the Dinsdale Juniors will most likely have to take notes the old fashioned way in at least some of their college classes.

Anyway, some of the ads I keep seeing seem to be for computers, palm pilots, or whatever, that enable you to write BY HAND with a stylus, and the computer can then treat that as an emailable (I just made up that word) document, and in some cases, even use it as a word processing document. I would think that decent handwriting would be extremely important for these systems to have any real use.