The Metro is today running a piece called Will turning to tablet computers to educate pupils kill handwriting?, which offers some interesting takes on the future of education and handwriting.
If you were a teenager sitting at school and your teacher asked you to choose between a Biro and one of the most sought- after devices in consumer history, which would you go for?
My assumption is that teenagers (and other pupils, for that matter) won’t necessarily get a choice—they’ll get the tools that are best for purpose, making allowance for budget and politics. In the same way that I find it unlikely 100 metre runners will be offered, say, a motorbike, teachers won’t be offering a shiny tablet for all school tasks, or asking a pupil to choose between technology and traditional media.
Both are key tools in a child’s development but there are concerns that handwriting will be drowned in a new wave of technology in schools.
The use of ‘drowned’ is very loaded. But here’s the brutal reality: most people in the UK don’t write much these days. I mostly type words, for both work and play; now and again, I’ll make written notes, but I genuinely cannot remember the last time I wrote anything long-form traditionally.
‘I can’t understand why the schools are doing it,’ says Sarah Mooney, principal of the London College of Graphology, who believes writing promotes creativity in a way a computer cannot.
Person with vested interest in the science of writing and relation to psychology in ‘technology that makes handwriting less important is bad for people’ shock! And while she might believe writing promotes creativity in a way a computer cannot, I’d say that’s rarely the case these days. Most people who write for a living are thrilled by the sheer flexibility computers offer. In my case, I can rapidly bang thoughts into WriteRoom or Scrivener and then mould and shape them rather like a sculptor working on a piece of rock. When I used to write using only paper, the process was slower and I’d be frustrated by errors and editing. At school, this was even worse, since we were encouraged to submit final English essays with no errors at all, or we’d be marked down. This turned a creative pursuit into laborious drudge work, which the computer typically makes significantly less painful.
Also, if we look at very young children, the simple act of holding a pencil and learning writing doesn’t come entirely naturally, whereas interaction with something like an iPad is far more intuitive. Children have stories to tell, and enabling them to do so before they’ve mastered writing unleashes creativity—it doesn’t restrict it.
‘People won’t be able to write eventually. It needs practice. I think that it will affect people being able to express themselves properly.
I don’t fully understand why Mooney thinks this is an either/or case. Yes, digital is becoming more important, but kids on our street still play football, despite EA’s FIFA being available for every modern console known to man. Kids still love making music with real instruments and learning to play them, despite digital music tools existing. Kids love painting, despite the prevalence of Photoshop, Painter, Brushes and other creative apps. More to the point, core physical skills aren’t going to disappear. Schools aren’t going to ban children writing and instead force an iPad into their mitts. Instead, physical skills and digital skills will go hand-in-hand, and pupils will use the most relevant skill and medium for the project they are working on. Again, this is beneficial, not a drawback.
‘It’s money being spent on the wrong thing. I think it should be spent on the teachers and less on, shall we say, material things.’
Mooney makes the assumption that this is about glamour and having more possessions. It’s not. I last year spoke to Fraser Speirs about his project, where every child in his school now has an iPad. He believes this has saved the school money through the shifting of purchases, empowered students, and also, importantly, made things better for teachers, not least in them being able to engage students and be more creative in terms of teaching. That to me suggests an investment in the right kind of technology is a good thing, not wrong.
I’m glad to see that the Metro’s article does provide balance. It next talks to Sara Davey, headteacher at Mounts Bay Academy comprehensive in Penzance, who says giving every pupil an iPad will make learning more interactive and democratic:
‘We actually think it’s the future,’ she says. ‘Learning used to be, particularly in IT, an individual at a monitor. What the iPads allow is collaborative group work and students chatting about ideas, brainstorming.’
And Speirs is also quoted, offering the kind of future that would make Mooney’s toes curl:
[He] makes it clear handwriting has not been discarded—‘we are not a paperless school’—[and] would welcome a time when pupils do exams on iPads or computers instead of using pen and paper.
‘I think that’s something that’s got to come,’ he says. ‘It seems a logical end point. Handwriting already is a dying art and it’s you and I who are killing it, because adults are not handwriting.’
However, he notes that writing itself isn’t going to die through the use of touchscreens:
‘What you might see is a generation of kids growing up who are as good at writing with their finger on a touch screen as they are with a pencil.’
It’s also worth noting that while everyone’s touchscreen crazy right now, there’s a good chance devices may offer more physical interaction in the future that dispenses with the generic ‘pictures under glass’ UI that’s now so popular. Bret Victor talks about such an idea in A brief rant on the future of interaction design. In such a future, paper might well be dispensed with, but writing might in some ways return to more physicality than less. Even if not, we’re at a point where we can unlock unbridled creativity in children barely old enough to talk. It’s not time to slam on the brakes, but to go full-speed ahead and see where the journey takes us.