The Write Stuff

Having just moved to Alabama a few weeks ago, it was only recently I found myself at the DMV getting a new driver's license. It was a fairly quick process. So quick, in fact, that my conversation with the lady at the check-in desk about the weather in Oklahoma took longer than actually getting the license. All in all, not bad.

Toward the end of the ordeal, I had to give my John Hancock on one of those electronic signature pads. Glad that I'm almost finished, I sit back in my seat and wait for the lady processing me to do her thing, when she says, matter of factly, "For an educator, you really have terrible handwriting. Please do it again." I didn't if I could do it again. I've been signing my name that way since having to sign my life away with our first mortgage twelve years ago. Now granted, those signature pad things never capture your signature all that accurately, but even I couldn't blame the computer for how mine looked. I guess I cold have responded to her that I'm an administrator, so it doesn't really matter anyway, but somehow that sounded better in my mind than it would have out loud.

All this came to mind today when I came across this article about Indiana public schools no longer being required to teach cursive handwriting. The rationale is that we are in a computer age and should focus more on keyboarding than handwriting. I mean, when was the last time you wrote a letter? So this is not really above cursive, per se, but about writing in general. But perhaps this is a false dilemma. Why not teach both? Why not teach keyboarding while at the same time continuing (starting?) to teach handwriting? I understand the pragmatics, but it seems we lose when we ditch handwriting, much of which is not pragmatic. What we do lose, exactly, will have to wait for another post.