The slow death of handwriting
Kids in today’s time and age are digital natives. As soon as they are born, they are surrounded with and exposed to gadgets and technological advancements on a regular basis. Even if they don’t intend to, they automatically learn how to use these gadgets. Smartphones, laptops, apps — things an aged person struggles to learn and use; teenagers use like a pro.
The other day, I was sitting with my four year old, teaching him to write the alphabet. He was curious to know why it was important to learn how to write, when we can do practically everything with computers. It made me think how handwriting is losing its relevance. Remember, the vestigial organs that seemingly look useless after the course of evolution? These organs once represented a function, but over time, that function became non-existent. We have either lost these organs or lost their use.
Handwriting, a reflection of one’s personality and identity — a skill we acquired centuries ago that differentiates us from the animal kingdom — is also unfortunately heading towards defunctness. Gone are the times when during an essay writing competition, there was a separate prize for handwriting. Now, teachers show YouTube videos in classrooms, handing out typed or copy-pasted print-outs as notes, emailing teaching resources to students, asking them to submit computerised assignments. After all this, we expect them to write fast and neat during exams. We are forgetting where there is no practice, there is no perfection. The same is happening with handwriting. It is difficult even to differentiate between assignments because they all look the same. There is no individualism and no reflection of sincerity and hard work through handwritten words. It is sad and frustrating how handwriting, once a prized art form, has become so illegible these days. It is all because digital word processors have replaced penmanship training in schools.
When we used to sit in our classroom and our teacher would dictate something to us, there used to be a race as to who would keep pace with the dictation. This daily practice of writing would effortlessly increase our speed and made our handwriting more legible with time. Nowadays, in modern classrooms, students are glued to computer screens, everything is explained on computers or through power-point presentations. Neither teachers are interested in taking any pain nor students.
My father passed away recently at 71 and reading his notes and write-ups written with pencil in his extraordinarily beautiful handwriting, I was thinking to myself how an era has ended, of those who used to give importance to writing and preserving everything with their hands, literally! The only way to save handwriting as a skill is to encourage kids to write, and to make them fall in love with this practice.
