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What we lose when we stop writing by hand

Students are spending less time learning handwriting. Here’s why it’s still an important skill.

My parents started dating back in the ’80s and for a while, they were long-distance. Since this was before our current era of smartphones and email, one of the ways they kept in touch was mail: My father would send cassette tapes to my mom with songs that reminded him of her, and they would both send letters reminiscing about the last time they were able to spend time together.

I love these letters because it’s a peek into my parents’ lives before me. I can feel the paper. I can see my mom’s beautiful penmanship. And from time to time, they also remind me that many of us would have to think long and hard to recall the last time we wrote something by hand.

According to Shawn Datchuk, a professor of special education at the University of Iowa and former director of the Iowa Reading Research Center, schoolchildren are writing less, too — and forget about cursive.

“The vast majority of states have adopted a national set of academic standards that specifically focus in on teaching handwriting during kindergarten and extends a little bit past the first grade,” he told Vox. “On average, teachers report spending as little as 10 minutes a week on teaching handwriting explicitly in kindergarten classrooms.”

This week, we explore how the ways we teach handwriting in the classroom have changed over time, and the impact it’s having on education as a whole. Plus: What are we missing when we don’t write by hand? We find out all of that and more on the latest episode of Explain It to Me, Vox’s weekly call-in podcast.

Below is an excerpt of my conversation with Datchuk, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full episode, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever........

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