Handwriting lessons to be scrapped by schools? Sounds good to us.

Should handwriting lessons be scrapped at schools? This Mum thinks so.

Here’s news that makes me happy – handwriting is being scaled back in some schools as it is now seen as an outdated method of communicating.

Wait till I tell my seven-and-a-half-year-old.

While the schools which are dropping handwriting lessons are currently on the other side of the world both he and I will be quietly hoping that Australian schools decide to follow suit.

The greatest achievement for a year two kid at his school is to be granted your pen license. It’s an eight-year-old’s version of getting your P’s.

The other kids look in awe as those given this privilege slowly cradle their ballpoints while they hide their 4B’s behind the nook of their palms hoping no one will notice their dismal failure.

It’s all he wants, but sadly not an achievable goal for the foreseeable future. I blame my ancestors you see. I firmly believe that terrible handwriting is genetic. I kid you not. My father once appeared in a newspaper article as having one of the most undecipherable signatures in Australia. True story. If I had access to the Fairfax library from the 1980’s I could prove it to you.

Surprisingly I turned out to be a journo rather than a doctor, which if you look at my handwriting seems to be the wrong calling. And as the genetic line of crappy handwriting goes, it looks like my son has inherited the disorder.

Sadly for him his primary school teachers don’t agree that it is genetic and are battling to improve his unfinished “a’s” and his sprawling “l’s”.

I nod in agreement while they talk of pencil grips and finger exercises while deep down I wonder whether it is really going to affect him when he types in his HSC exams on his tablet in 2025.

I feel vindicated therefore in my deep down skepticism of the need for handwriting lessons when I learn that schools in Finland from next year will no longer be taught cursive writing instead being taught how to type.

Dr Misty Adoniou, a senior lecturer in language literacy at the University of Canberra told the ABC that learning cursive writing, or running writing, had as much relevance as learning to knit or crochet. She said kids needed to learn how to write but that ‘running’ writing was outdated.

Dr Eileen Honan a lecturer in literacy education agreed saying that, “writing beautiful script has nothing to do with the ability to read and write productively, intelligently and creatively".

So will learning cursive stay as a part of our education system?

From next year NAPLAN is trialling an electronic method, but experts say Australia probably won’t follow Finland’s lead.

A recent piece by Nicola Yelland, Professor of Education at Victoria University for The Conversation argued that our method of teaching writing needs to change.

“While there is recognition that using a pencil or pen is a useful skill to have, spending school time on learning cursive, via careful copying of the letters and patterns, does not seem a particularly good use of school time.”

She says what children need is opportunities to write provided at schools, but not “endless cursive practice on mindless sheets and being required to write in this mode for exams”. Instead, they should be provided with the chance to “to create narratives, with pens, pencils and keyboard.”

While a move like Finland's remains off the cards for our family, my year two son spends his afternoons copying out endless pages of wiggles and lines hoping to achieve that much desired license sometime soon.

In the meantime I encourage him to give up his dream of stunt car racing and look at medicine as a future career instead.

What do you think? Should handwriting lessons be taken off the curriculum?

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