Why the slow decay of children’s handwriting skills spells trouble
Why the slow decay of children’s handwriting skills spells trouble
Growing numbers of students are typing rather than writing their exams, due to fears their messy or illegible penmanship will hurt their marks.
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By all means make students handwrite where it’s realistic… notes, forms, etc. but writing by hand, constantly, for over an hour, is just ridiculous.
It’s not just the writing they’re learning. Writing gives a consistent way to practice fine motor skills in general.
There are some fucking klutzy kids around who’ve never done much drawing or colouring, never done much craft with scissors, never played an instrument…they’ve never had all that many organically occurring opportunities to practice fine motor skills. If the only practice they get with those broad skills is writing, and then we cull the writing, when do they learn?
So we teach them through other methods.
Fine motor skills can be taught through almost anything, it doesn’t have to be writing.
That’s just it though. They’re NOT being taught through other methods. Kids are measurably getting worse at fine motor skills, and picking them up at later ages, because they’re being given fewer and fewer chances to practice. Kids are doing less drawing, less messy craft, less of just about everything hands on.
Writing is one of the few options we have that we can guarantee every child - no matter what materials they have access to at home, no matter how involved their parents may or may not be - has ample opportunity to do.
I get it. Handwriting can be a pain in the backside. I’m literally sitting here with a diagnosed disability that makes it super hard for me - I have cerebral palsy, my fine motor skills are shite - so I absolutely get it. I still handwrite when I can, because it’s some of the best skill development/reinforcement you can do for fine motor.
At least in early years education I know they’re being taught them.
As for primary aged children, we should be directing our energy into ensuring they have a wide range of opportunities to do so instead of bemoaning the lost importance of written writing.
But from what I understand, primary is trialling ECE play based learning ideas so I don’t see why they would be doing less of it?
They’re doing much, much less of it at home…which means that there are a lot of kids coming into primary school with already extant skill gaps. That’s WHY they’re trialling ECE stuff for slightly older kids - because the kids haven’t learned it yet, when they should have.
How much handwriting do you expect children to be doing at home? If parents aren’t enabling their children to do arts and crafts etc, they’re not have going to been getting them to do writing either.
Also the ECE stuff isn’t about not learning such and such skill, it’s about teaching methodology. Going from a top-down teacher knows best approach to one that focuses on fostering children’s innate desire to learn. It’s less rote and more autonomy based teaching.
When I say “they’re not doing it at home” I was referring to fine motor skills in general. Because they’re not drawing, not crafting, not playing with the tactile stuff as much.
They come in behind on fine motor generally. Writing is a consistent, every day activity - right from the absolute basics of the alphabet or number recognition and learning to spell/write their own name - that strengthens fine motor skills. If we take writing away as a daily thing, we’re going to struggle to come up with an equivalent activity that can be done as frequently, by as many children, in as many different settings, as writing is.