We frequently hear critics argue that U.S. students can’t write well and that there is a “literacy crisis” in the U.S. What is the origin of these discourses? What do they have to do with immigration, national security, and economics? How does the notion that Americans can’t write drive the national push to test writing? Here we explore the history of writing and testing in the U.S., the “science” and technology of testing approaches, and how the rhetoric of assessment impacts the lives of Americans today.
5 comments:
I'd agree with you 100% on this one. By the time I got to college, nothing was based on actually writing out anything anymore and all computer based. Then by the time I actually started using my handwriting again, I had to get used to actually writing. It took a long time to write well, like I had learned in late elementary/early middle school. Now it's not an issue, but I'm lucky I had professors in college that didn't mind handwritten materials.
I disagree. My college experience has been filled with writing things out. I take notes in class, I have in class activities, quizzes and essays, and most of my creative writing happens on paper before I type it up (which is a fairly large proportion of my class writing). I wouldn't say that my handwriting has improved (nor has it gotten worse) but computers have yet to completely take over the act of writing. And I don't think they ever will. Someone's freehand, I believe, is like a fingerprint. I large part of identity is in someone's handwriting (and I don't mean things like Mary Jane dots her 'i's with hearts so she must be a girly-girl). But I think you can tell from someone's handwriting how much effort they put into something they wrote. Take, for instance a poem. Looking at a first draft of a poem is like looking at the aftermath of some disaster. Things are scribbled out, crossed out, written over, there are arrows connecting lines and stars inserted the in the middle of stanzas to represent another line(s) found elsewhere on the page. You can tell that someone put a lot of thought into that writing.
Class notes are written differently than quizzes or essays. The point of this is that I don't believe that computers will ever take away the ability to freehand.
When I first saw this post I laughed at the evolution of handwriting, to which I quickly became scared for the future. I love Meg's association of identity with handwriting and completely agree. However, I do not agree that it is impossible for computers to one day completely take over ones ability to free hand. After watching the CBS clip I am only further worried that this is very possible. America is notorious for our quick fixes-- we want food fast and cheap, enter McDonalds, and we want news made relevant to us, in particular all the star gossip sans the political controversy, enter Perezhilton, and we want to be able to get out a thought correctly and as quickly as possible--enter the computer and not slow print. Not to say that everyone will hop on board with this but as time progresses and computer literacy improves, the likelihood of an individual writing their thoughts, versus say blogging, is only going to decrease. It is sad but in my opinion very realistic.
In my opinion you hit this pretty well. Handwriting is now a fragment of the past and being a college student I rarely ever write something with a paper and pen and turn it in. I don't even hand write drafts anymore. The reason why is for the simple fact that using a computer is quicker and our society is all about pace. The faster we move and produce something the better. Some formal documents require cursive writing and many can not write cursive in a legible way.
The only thing I don't think computer can take away is our how we express an identity through hand writing. No two signatures are the same so in a sense I don't think hand writing and it's entirety will go away. It's just an option, that while it doesn't increase and help us write better, it's a means for a more convenient way to get something done.
Handwriting has been the bane of my existence since about the 7th grade– just like May, I found out that handwriting carries a social weight, and that poor handwriting can affect a reader's perception of not just a piece of writing, but the writer themselves.
When I first learned cursive in 3rd grade, I enjoyed knowing how to write in a different way. I was meticulous and attentive to the smallest details of my writing. As time went by, however, it became "cool" to have messy handwriting. By 7th grade, my friends and I were engaged in overt contests to see whose handwriting was messiest. I'm really not sure why we did this. To teach us the unfortunate realities of the world, my seventh grade teacher asked our principal if she could read some anonymous student writing and give some feedback. My principal, the stereotypical owlish nun you would expect to find in a Catholic school, was astounded by the illegibility of our handwriting. She was very scathing in her critiques, and told us that whether we liked it or not, the visual form of our handwriting was very important. She, of course, was "old school," and came from a time when cursive was a social norm and an indicator of status. Though we were growing up in the digital age and would soon do most of our writing on computers, my principal and teacher stressed the importance of neat handwriting. Though my teacher could read our scrawl, he encouraged us to become "scribes," assuring us that someday, neat handwriting would work to our advantage. I think he's right- if the goal of writing is to communicate and convince, neat handwriting is an important tool for any writer to win over a reader.
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