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The importance of handwriting is becoming better understood
https://www.economist.com/culture/2023/09/14/the-importance-of-handwriting-is-becoming-better-understood
Research on pens and paper highlights their benefits
https://www.economist.com/culture/2023/09/14/the-importance-of-handwriting-is-becoming-better-understood
Research on pens and paper highlights their benefits
Their sample size is students who took handwritten notes versus students who typed.
Ignoring the incredibly small sample size and the extremely specific scenario, I'm not convinced.
This is nothing new. I had many professors who would not allow laptops due to the differences in encoding and recall between the two mediums.
I used a surface and stylus for note-taking for this very reason, and I had two strict professors make exceptions because my note-taking was technically still handwritten.
::: spoiler Yeah, here you go!
Research on pens and paper highlights their benefits
Two and a half millennia ago, Socrates complained that writing would harm students. With a way to store ideas permanently and externally, they would no longer need to memorise. It is tempting to dismiss him as an old man complaining about change. Socrates did not have a stack of peer-reviewed science to make his case about the usefulness of learning concepts by heart.
Today a different debate is raging about the dangers of another technology—computers—and the typing people do on them. As primary-school pupils and PhD hopefuls return for a new school year in the northern hemisphere, many will do so with a greater-than-ever reliance on computers to take notes and write papers. Some parents of younger students are dismayed that their children are not just encouraged but required to tote laptops to class. University professors complain of rampant distraction in classrooms, with students reading and messaging instead of listening to lectures.
A line of research shows the benefits of an “innovation” that predates computers: handwriting. Studies have found that writing on paper can improve everything from recalling a random series of words to imparting a better conceptual grasp of complicated ideas.
For learning material by rote, from the shapes of letters to the quirks of English spelling, the benefits of using a pen or pencil lie in how the motor and sensory memory of putting words on paper reinforces that material. The arrangement of squiggles on a page feeds into visual memory: people might remember a word they wrote down in French class as being at the bottom-left on a page, par exemple.
One of the best-demonstrated advantages of writing by hand seems to be in superior note-taking. In a study from 2014 by Pam Mueller and Danny Oppenheimer, students typing wrote down almost twice as many words and more passages verbatim from lectures, suggesting they were not understanding so much as rapidly copying the material.
Handwriting—which takes longer for nearly all university-level students—forces note-takers to synthesise ideas into their own words. This aids conceptual understanding at the moment of writing. But those taking notes by hand also perform better on tests when students are later able to study from their notes. The effect even persisted when the students who typed were explicitly instructed to rephrase the material in their own words. The instruction was “completely ineffective” at reducing verbatim note-taking, the researchers note: they did not understand the material so much as parrot it.
Many studies have confirmed handwriting’s benefits, and policymakers have taken note. Though America’s “Common Core” curriculum from 2010 does not require handwriting instruction past first grade (roughly age six), about half the states since then have mandated more teaching of it, thanks to campaigning by researchers and handwriting supporters. In Sweden there is a push for more handwriting and printed books and fewer devices. England’s national curriculum already prescribes teaching the rudiments of cursive by age seven.
However, several school systems in America have gone so far as to ban most laptops. This is too extreme. Some students have disabilities that make handwriting especially hard. Nearly all will eventually need typing skills. And typing can improve the quality of writing: being able to get ideas down quickly, before they are forgotten, can obviously be beneficial. So can slowing down the speed of typing, says Dr Oppenheimer.
Virginia Berninger, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Washington, is a longtime advocate of handwriting. But she is not a purist; she says there are research-tested benefits for “manuscript” print-style writing, for cursive (which allows greater speed) but also for typing (which is good practice for composing passages). Since students spend more time on devices as they age, she argues for occasional “tuning up” of handwriting in later school years.
And perhaps even into adulthood. Johnson had not handwritten anything longer than a letter in decades before putting actual pen to paper to write this column’s first draft. Whether it made any difference to the outcome is a question that readers must decide.
Socrates may or may not have had a point about the downsides of writing. But no one would remember, much less care, if his student Plato had not noted it down for the benefit of posterity.■
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I think socrates and this paper have a point. The problem is there is a limit to memorization volume an individual can do and a rate that someone can write. As humanities knowledge increases and gets into more complex areas. Humans need these advantages in order to be able to understand what we have so far and increase that understanding further. If we live long enough to see it we will need brain interfaces as typing, reading, and discussing will just not be efficient enough for what students have to learn.
I’ve long thought that actually writing notes makes your brain process the information better than when you type them. I tend to recall much better when writing.
That's what I remember learning while in college. Someone had done a study showing that those who wrote out notes were able to recall information better than those who typed their notes.
Understanding core concepts is more important than being able to recite them verbatim. Knowing where to find the information and how to understand the information is more important than memorizing. Outside of the school system you'll always have the internet available in the workplace.
Handwritten notes are FAR better for me. But this article made me realize a thing, not everyone can see pictures in their head. (Can't remember the word for that.)
When I'm trying to remember a thing, I can picture my handwritten note in my head very clearly, even remember where it's placed on the page. If you're one of those people who read a novel and can't form pictures, I suspect handwritten notes do you no good.
I remember a quote Hunter Thompson used; "If they give you lined paper to write on, write across the lines."
If you only have QWERTY and they take the keyboards away, you'll be muted.
edit Juan Ramón Jiménez, as quoted by Ray Bradbury introducing “Fahrenheit 451”.
imho