Jessica Kerwin Jenkins, in a contrarian review of Anne Trubek’s forthcoming book The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting :
Though one technology often supplants another, that doesn’t necessitate concession. Considering its rich significance, instead of hustling handwriting off to the graveyard, perhaps what’s called for is resurrection.
Reading Trubek’s recent
New York Times piece
“Handwriting Just Doesn’t Matter” made me dubious about investing time in the book. Two sentences from the
Times piece:
People talk about the decline of handwriting as if it’s proof of the decline of civilization. But if the goal of public education is to prepare students to become successful, employable adults, typing is inarguably more useful than handwriting.
Notice how the first sentence stacks the deck by characterizing those who value the practice of writing by hand as fuddy-duddy doomsayers. As for the second sentence:
is the goal of public education to produce “successful, employable adults”? And what does “successful” mean? Here, from John Churchill of Phi Beta Kappa, is another perspective
on the purpose of education.
And what about all those people writing in pocket notebooks and journals?
Related reading
All OCA
handwriting posts (Pinboard)
On “On the New Literacy”
