Why handwriting still matters

I work in learning support at a prep school in the South-East and have started teaching my pupils handwriting. It seems that the future of education, especially for children with special needs, is digital. But why should those who struggle to write legibly be given a laptop instead of extra lessons in handwriting? Faced with the obvious decline in the quality of handwriting, what are teachers to do?

When in doubt, consult the English national curriculum. The handwriting curriculum for Key Stage 2 (aged eight to ten) is divided into three levels: working ‘towards expected standards’, working ‘at expected standards’ and working ‘at greater depth’. Students at the first level ‘work towards’ the following skills: writing for a range of purposes, using paragraphs to organise ideas, utilising correct punctuation and capitalisation, narrating in descriptive language, spelling correctly ‘most words’ in their year group’s range and writing legibly. ‘Working at’ means they can actually do the things listed. To be working ‘at greater depth’ — supposedly the most advanced of the three stages — means ‘pupils are expected to be able to use the range of punctuation in their writing, but this does not mean that every single punctuation mark must be evident’. What kind of punctuation mark isn’t evident?

This ‘working towards’ business provides excuses for teachers to ignore their pupils’ handwriting and just crack on with the rest of the national curriculum. The National Handwriting Association states: ‘Teachers can use their discretion to ensure that, on occasion, a particular weakness does not prevent an accurate judgment being made of a pupil’s attainment overall.’ The phrasing is vague enough to cover a multitude of challenges, from dyslexia to poor spelling. The teacher can dismiss a child’s terrible writing, a result of the education system’s own failure, as a ‘particular weakness’.

Of the children I work with in Years 3-7, it is fair to say that at least half are ‘working towards’ legible writing, if legible means I might guess what they’re trying to say after several moments of squinting at the paper. Their spelling isn’t much better. I have recently seen ‘come’ spelled ‘cum’ and ‘saw’ spelled ‘sore’, amid more lower-case ‘i’ pronouns than I can count. This often reflects a lack of understanding of these words, but sometimes it’s just pure laziness and a result of low expectations from both parents and teachers.

As standards of handwriting slip, more and more laptops are appearing in classrooms. ‘So what if handwriting is on the way out?’ one teacher and head of her subject said to me recently. ‘When will these kids really need to use a pen and paper after school?’ But handwriting is about much more than aesthetics. In fact, handwriting as it should be taught in primary education isn’t really about aesthetics at all. We’re not training calligraphists, but rather teaching children how to form coherent thoughts and arguments through the written word.

We don’t all need beautiful handwriting (let’s start at legible), but we do need to be taught it properly to fully understand the English language. A study at Aix-Marseille University revealed that a group of three- to five-year-olds who were taught writing by hand were better at recognising letters than the group of the same age who were taught by keyboard. A study done on adults yielded similar results.

Having criticised the National Association of Handwriting, I now quote its website in earnest: ‘Writing down ideas fluently depends on effective transcription, [making handwriting] a functional tool in the writing process.’ Writing by hand and typing yield different results because the processes are so different. According to Edouard Gentaz, professor of developmental psychology at the University of Geneva: ‘Handwriting is a complex task which requires various skills — feeling the pen and paper, moving the writing implement, and directing movement by thought. Children take several years to master this precise motor exercise.’ Typing is faster to learn because it requires just one movement of your fingers — simply pressing the right buttons.

And that’s its advantage, according to some experts. ‘What we want from writing — and what the Sumerians wanted — is cognitive automaticity, the ability to think as fast as possible, freed as much as can be from the strictures of whichever technology we must use to record our thoughts,’ writes Anne Trubek, one-time associate professor of rhetoric and composition at Oberlin College in Ohio. No, Anne, that’s not what we want from writing, and I’m not sure that’s what the Sumerians wanted from it either. Would anyone want their child to learn that speed is the most valuable aspect of the thinking process? Learning to form words by hand is a vital aspect of learning to use language, and consequently, of learning to think. And learning to think, to structure thoughts in coherent arguments or poetic form or whatever the occasion demands, sets children up for a higher quality of life. For something so important, there is no quick fix.

At the prep school where I work, our best teacher’s pupils now read and analyse novels and compose their own poetry. These are the same pupils whose handwriting a few months ago might have been lifted from a dying man’s will, so weak and quaky, so unassured was the penmanship on display. As their handwriting improves, so does everything else — spelling, comprehension, textual analysis and writing generally.

How does this teacher get his pupils, even the ones who wrote ‘sore’ instead of ‘saw’, to write in metred verse? Spend an hour in his classroom and the answer becomes obvious. He has high expectations. Those responsible for our national curriculum should consider raising theirs.