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Comment by fnordpiglet

1 year ago

In my opinion handwriting is as useless a skill as is possible. I never use my handwriting - ever. I likewise don’t churn butter, do arithmetic beyond what I can do in my head, or card yarn for my clothes.

There is nothing redeeming about artisanal hand scripting other than writing annotations on objects to label them, and even then a label maker does a better job in every dimension. Typing is a fundamental skill in the modern world, and type written text is not just considerably more legible, it’s also indexable for search etc.

Having a sense of pride is often coupled with a sense of utility and purpose. Few people feel pride in useless exercises done for rote purposes and celebration of the way it was done in the past. Some certainly do, and god bless them. But I feel more pride in my code than artisanal scribbles, in my handiwork, in my learning, etc. Kids are no different. Maybe they feel pride in their Minecraft creations. Is a complex red stone build with intricate visual designs and creative use in game not more compelling and interesting than manipulating a wood stick to make glyphs? A lot of people think the things a kid takes pride in aren’t worth taking pride in, and instead try to make them take pride in something from their own childhood.

They are misidentifying a lack of interest in your interests with a lack of pride in their work.

I grew up entirely pre-smartphone, so my education was mostly handwriting except a couple typed papers a year (and then even more handwriting in college—oh, the hand cramps on tests).

A couple months ago I had to write about five sentences by hand, and it dawned on me that that single act was probably twice as much handwriting as I’d done the entire prior two years, not counting signatures and such.

It was a really weird thing to realize.