Much of Generation Z–that is, teenagers and twenty-somethings–cannot express themselves with handwriting. Instead, they use digital devices. The problem, though, is that they can’t type or keyboard either.
I had been aware of the decline in handwriting. After all, cursive is hardly ever taught in schools anymore. As a result, graduates not only can’t write in cursive, they can’t read it either. A longer, more detailed article on the subject (HT: Tom Hering) by Christine Rosen notes that it isn’t included in the Core Curriculum that public schools tend to follow. She quotes a South Carolina school board member: “We’re trying to be realistic about skills that kids are going to need. You can’t do everything. Something’s got to go.”
Setting aside the question of what the kids are being taught instead (The 1619 Project? Transgender-affirming workshops? Getting in touch with your feelings?), both articles and the research they cite say that writing by hand is being replaced by writing on computers. That school board member thinks that handwriting is not one of the “skills that kids are going to need.”
So after reading that first article, I wondered, can the kids type–that is to say, “keyboard”–either? Whereupon I researched that question. It turns out, the answer to that question is “no.”
Nick Farrell has written an article for the tech site Fudzilla entitled Generation Z Can’t Type. He reports that back in 2000, when the digital revolution was well underway, 44% of high school graduates had taken a keyboarding class. Today, that number has plunged to only 2.4%.
As a result, most teenagers and twenty-somethings use the “hunt and peck” method when writing on a keyboard, letting them type at the glacial rate of, at best, 13 words per minute. Since that’s so slow, many are depending on speech-to-text software, which eliminates actual writing in favor of just transcribing speaking, which, in practice introduces an abundance of grammatical errors and non-coherent rambling.
There are lots of apps and websites that will teach you to type. (One that is especially well-spoken of is Type.com.)
But why go to that trouble? Why do we need to keyboard? We can just use our phones. It’s impossible to type on a cell phone keyboard. You have to use just two fingers. And, indeed, I have seen lots of young people move their thumbs with great alacrity while texting their friends.
So now students are writing their assignments on their phones! The educational software company Canvas reports that 39% of all student work submitted through its system is uploaded from a mobile device.
Does it matter? Well, if you are writing laboriously with two fingers or thumbs, your communications will likely consist of very short sentences. We see that in social media entries, which also rely on an ever-growing vocabulary of abbreviations and icons. (LOL. FWIW, here is an list with translations.) This makes it difficult to develop ideas or to pursue a logical train of thought.
Handwriting and typing, on the other hand, lend themselves to fully-developed paragraphs and the exploration of ideas in papers, articles, and books. And just as being unable to write cursive also means being unable to read cursive, being unable to write in a connected way manifests itself in being unable to read connected texts.
In addition to the skill of fluency in language, handwriting in particular builds up our cognitive abilities, including the ability to focus and our capacity to understand. Conversely losing this 5,500 year-old skill means losing the ability to concentrate and to understand. As we are seeing.
For more details and research findings on the cognitive effects of losing the skill of handwriting–as well as the consequences of losing the manual dexterity that goes with it, go to the Charcosset and Rosen articles.)
Photo from PxHere, Public Domain
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