US has shown why longhand must not be written off

Imagine a time when handwriting becomes like hieroglyphics: incomprehensible to all but scholars. And surprising as it may sound, that time has already arrived in the US, where 22 states recently had to resort to legislation to ensure that young Americans will still able to write by hand—and read handwriting. It seems the current keyboard generation in school there today already regards the outcome of putting pen and pencil to paper as arcane and all but indecipherable. Typing has taken a lot of character and drama out of communication by making uniformity the norm. There is no way of judging a person by their handwriting anymore; the beauty of copperplate symmetry as opposed to spidery scrawls, slating script to straight, the primness of some handwriting, the flamboyance of others. In the era of handwritten text, as much could be gleaned from the way sentences were written as from what the words actually expressed. The very idea that many Americans (at least the younger ones) can now be stumped by merely the handwritten word is hilarious. That many of them are no longer taught—yes, taught—to write by hand and read handwritten words is awesome in its insouciance. American educators for the last few decades clearly presumed children will only live and work in places with keyboards and printed words, never needing to use a pen or read handwritten text. Never mind that some of the most important documents in US history were hand-written, including drafts of the Declaration of Independence. Not to mention some of the world’s most precious contemporary documents like the scribbled song drafts by the Beatles. It is ridiculous that these are now as esoteric as the Dead Sea Scrolls for many Americans at a time when millions of people elsewhere in the world are still using pens as their main writing implements. The pitfalls of unfamiliarity with handwritten words are not hard to discern. A professor in a US University had a eureka moment regarding the importance of learning how to read and write cursive script when a student regarded a certain handwritten historical document as an image rather than a text as he was unable to read it. She realised that even reading the handwritten letters and notes of a generation ago would soon become impossible for young people. This is akin to Americans losing the old skill of telling time on a clock or watch with a dial and two hands. According to a survey in 2021, nearly 50 per cent of Americans under the age of 35 do not own any “analog clocks”, and 33 per cent of them between 35 and 44 do not have them either. So, most of those luxury timepieces worn by young celebrities are probably just jewellery not devices to know what time it is. For that, they have their mobile phones, presumably. In many parts of the world, smartphones and other handheld personal devices have already become indispensable for remembering phone numbers—some no longer remember even their own—and doing even everyday calculations. Some can no longer even ‘read’ money. So much of the brain’s quotidian exercises have been handed over to digital entities in the past 50 years. Handwriting was also given similar short shrift in favour of keypads in many US states. It was during the Barack Obama Administration in 2010 that cursive (hand) writing failed to make it to the national Common Core Standards for school curricula, even though it specifically mentioned keyboard skills for grades 3 to 5. Hence many schools stopped focusing on penmanship. By 2015, though, several states began enacting laws to ensure that the skill is not lost due to some bureaucratic oversight. California is just the most recent ‘convert’. Interestingly, South Carolina (where the Republican US presidential nomination hopeful Nikki Haley comes from) not only passed a law mandating cursive hand-writing skills by the end of grade 5, it also required students to memorise multiplication tables so that they would also be able to multiply numbers mentally in that same period. The pushback against keyboards and in favour of old-fashioned brain stimulation has not come a moment too soon. Multiple studies—ironically, many of them conducted in the US—have shown that that cursive writing stimulates many more neural systems in the brain than typing does, and the practice of writing by hand integrates motor and perceptual skills. Many teachers and other pedagogic experts aver that writing joined letters rather than printing also aids spelling and sentence formation in young learners. So, it is heartening that US states are slowly opting to “bring it back”. Piquantly, the US actually has a National Handwriting Day—23 January—the birthday of John Hancock, whose impeccably executed signature stands out in the US Declaration of Independence. A day to remember the benefits of writing longhand is much needed everywhere. Writing without delete or backspace keys and devices to alter the sequence of paragraphs makes thoughts measured and sentences cogent from the outset. That mental discipline is invaluable. Of course, some documents are best not written by hand anymore, because of the serious consequences of possible illegibility. Medical prescriptions are first on the list. No wonder last week the Orissa High Court directed the state government to issue directions to doctors to write medical prescriptions and all medico-legal documents in capital letters or legible handwriting. Printouts would be best in such cases but perhaps not widely practicable in India just yet. Though the benefits of hand-written communication are undeniable, that does not mean everyone must have ‘perfect’ handwriting. Indeed, handwriting is perhaps the very first medium of self-expression available to everyone. People form letters and even join them together in unique ways to express their individuality. Taking away that first agency of distinctiveness right from the start can only be detrimental to the development of critical thinking in the long run. Penmanship not only has generational (and some say even gender) differences and peculiarities, but also regional markers. The way Americans generally hand-write a capital G, for instance, is very different from the way the British do. The letters ‘b’, ‘r’, ‘x’ and ‘z’ are also handwritten differently on either side of the Atlantic. The British style has many similarities with how other Europeans write longhand as well. But then keyboards obviated all such distinctions. Unlike the US, schools in India continue to teach students cursive handwriting without controversy or dissent. But in the worldwide drive to make work paperless in the interests of sustainability, handwritten text is fast becoming an unintended casualty. While there are many advantages to going digital, the need to retain certain fine motor skills that keep the human brain ticking over—such as writing longhand—cannot be discarded. A balance must be struck. The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost_’s views._ Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.