Throwing Picasso Away

It is dying, slowly, to a generation who thinks they are too “busy” to put pen to paper. With all of the electric tablets, and phones becoming more and more popular in school note taking, the art of good penmanship is becoming extinct.  What is the problem?  Allowing the next generation of students to take notes electronically, will result in illegible or no handwriting at all.

Not having penmanship skills is a major problem for three reasons. The first one being, what happens when students have no access to an electronic device? Or when they are put into a situation when it’s required to handwrite something? With no practice, and teaching now days, the situation will end disastrously. And will result in misinterpreted words, bad grades, or even no words at all.

The second is that penmanship is an art and should be treated as one. Each style of hand writing, whether it is cursive or printing, is completely unique just like an artist’s sculpture or painting. It gives an identity for the writer, and lets the reader get an idea of who the writer is. Handwriting is an art. Just as you wouldn’t through away a Picasso, good penmanship shouldn’t be thrown away either.

Thirdly, other handwritten works like letters show the recipient that you care and took time out of your day to sit down and write to them. Deep down, everybody appreciates a small handwritten note more than a full length letter by e-mail.

Should we ban all electronic writing? The answer is no, it has its important place in our culture, but shouldn’t be used exclusively. Others disagree with this statement, claiming that writing on a computer is much easier, faster and organized. However, with a little hard work and experience that students should be getting in school, handwriting can be just as easy, fast, and organized.

So having handwriting come back as the main note taking technique in the classroom is an essential idea so young people get a chance to better themselves in penmanship, not only for its art, but also the practical use it has. So what about you? What about the next time you need to take notes, which choice will you make?