Horizon

The loss of handwriting also may be a cognitive opportunity missed. The neurological process that directs thought, through fingers, into written symbols is a highly sophisticated one.

Although I was taught writing and didn't formally learn to type until 7th grade, I think I could be considered a first wave example of these kids. Although I can write cursive, I find that my manual dexterity cannot possibly keep up my thought processing. If I type, I can keep up with my thoughts, with pauses for editing and reflecting instead of waiting on my hands to catch up with my thoughts.

I recently took a test that was supposed to measure "ideation" -- how quickly you can come up with ideas. I didn't score as well as I expected, but I feel that was mostly because I couldn't write my ideas down fast enough (it was a timed test).

In other words, I find the cognitive proccess I quote above to be an incredible slow one, and the process of writing, editing, revising with a computer to produce better, clearer communication. In 50 years, someone will be quoted saying the same thing about keyboarding's cognitive processing when we all move to speech recognition.

There's a discussion of this article over at the Volokh Conspiracy today. The comments by Sal are particularly worth reading, including his assertion that cursive instruction drives boys to Ritalin.

I nearly added a comment, but found myself unable to articulate anything sensible without being overcome by emotion. I have terrible fine motor skills -- ranking somewhere within the lowest 5% of population in manual dexterity -- and cursive instruction was intolerable. We were actually required to use cursive for all schoolwork, and one of the greatest delights of college was the discovery that I could write however I wanted.

*&%$ cursive!