There’s a lost art in the age of the computer, and it’s called penmanship. Given that I am currently sitting at a computer and writing this, I realize that I’ve lost it almost completely. I’ve always been terrible at writing things out by hand. I find my printing and handwriting slow, tedious, and entirely un-beautiful. I am sad that I do not have my grandmother’s or grandfather’s penmanship, but I don’t really have the inclination to pursue it as an art in itself.
In those days so long, long ago – say, a few decades ago – before the age of spell check and computer keyboards, penmanship was important. You needed to learn how to write well so that people could read your thoughts. You needed to learn how to write well to look professional.
Now, it’s more of a dying art, except to those in the primary grades everywhere. We can communicate through computer keyboards and touch screens and even by poking our fingers at little keys on our phones. It’s a brave new world out there, one with much communication and very little penmanship.
This is a sad thing for the art of writing, but it’s also a good thing for those of us who failed (yes, failed) handwriting in elementary school. I watch my daughter struggle to make her letters by hand, and I realize that it is so very important that she learn how to do this. Yet I also realize that she will do most of her written communication via the computer keyboard.
When we teach young children to write, there is so much focus on the physical act of writing. It’s easy to obsess about that and forget about the purpose of the written word: to communicate our thoughts and stories to others across the room, across the world, or even across centuries. Creating those marks lends our thoughts an air of permanency and credibility.
Just as there was a shift from oral storytelling to written language, there is now a shift from good penmanship to keyboarding. One skill is overtaking another, but the message remains the same. As you teach your child how to write, remember that what’s important is communicating thoughts and stories. Whether we do this through oral language, though handwriting, or through computer-based communication is up to us.