Monday, February 07, 2011

In Defense Of Scrawl


You know someone posted this article, of all places, on one of the homeschooling forums I read. I thought it was a joke at first seeing how homeschoolers generally are wise to the false religion that is Big Education. I was going to reply and call *BS* on it but have long since curbed my *web-rebuttals* with strangers.

I mean who cares about handwriting IN THE REAL WORLD - except for 4th grade schoolmarms? I'm very concerned about my doctor's penmanship and Steve Jobs' too, aren't you?

An academic focus on handwriting, in 2011, is nothing short of barbarism!

1 comment:

Anne Galivan said...

You don't have the whole article so it's hard to make a judgement but I can see where writing by hand could play a critical role in brain development.

I don't think it's about having beautiful penmanship but rather what happens in the brain when a child handles a pencil (or crayon or paintbrush for that matter).

You require your children to do math sheets - they are using a pencil when they do those and that is the point...that they don't rely solely on keyboards. And given that schools are spending billions in tax dollars to make sure every public school educated child has their own laptop...I'd go for a "let them use pencil and paper" approach if I had my way!