The Lost Art of Note-taking

For elementary and high school students, using pencils, pens, and paper for note-taking, writing, and mathematics offers several well-supported advantages over electronic devices. 

Kevin Finn | March 10, 2026

In a former life, I taught math and science to Catholic school students in grades 6-9. In the early 2000s, I began noticing a troubling trend: many students had little to no idea how to take notes from a lecture or a textbook. Some didn’t even know how to hold a pencil correctly. It’s worth noting that, in the years just before I retired, we were receiving significantly more students transferring from public schools.

One moment from a ninth-grade Algebra class still stands out. During the first week of school, I noticed a couple of students sitting passively with nothing on their desks -- spectators, as if they were watching a YouTube video rather than attending class. When I told them to take out their notebooks, one student reached into his backpack without looking, pulled out a random notebook, opened to a random page, and began copying what was on the board. When I asked if he was using his Algebra notebook, he checked and discovered it was his History notebook. I then asked to see the notes he had taken the day before. He had no idea where they were.

He wasn’t alone. I ended up restarting the class from Day One, teaching them how to record the date, number their notebook pages, copy information neatly, and organize their work -- skills that should be firmly established by middle........

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