Legibility

The old-fashioned art still has some use.

One of our tutor’s students recently apologized for his handwriting.  As things go, it was not particularly bad, but on a mathematics test his teacher had mistaken a y for and x and marked him down accordingly.  A student from a previous year had indeed written so illegibly that his teacher often could make out nothing of his answer, and he himself had trouble reviewing because he could not read his own notes.  Our astronomer remembers an incident from graduate school when he’d had to miss a class and asked a classmate to take notes for him.  In the string of algebra somehow a x had disappeared and an n shown up from nowhere, which was somewhat bewildering.  It turned out that instead of making an x with a two strokes crossed, the classmate did it left-to-right and when written quickly this opened up into something like an n.  (This would all be clearer if we could sit down with you and a piece of paper.)

Surely, then, being able to do mathematics by typing online (as is now very often done) avoids this problem?  Well, no.  Our tutor had a student recently miss two problems of an online assignment because she’d included the dollar signs in monetary answers, and the program answers didn’t have them.  But more important than unforgiving bits of software is the simple unsuitability of typing for many of the symbols of mathematics.  During the time of all-virtual sessions our tutor was often extremely frustrated because it was so difficult to show an expression that would have been simple with pen and paper.  Even sophisticated word-processing programs are very clumsy with any math beyond the simplest.

So handwritten math survives, for convenience (and because it’s harder to cheat on paper than online).  Is handwriting of any importance in other subjects?  Essays are now all done by typing, rather than being written out longhand, no doubt a vast relief to English teachers nowadays.  Class notes can be typed, when they’re not already in the form of a series of PowerPoint slides in some accessible file.  But again typed notes are just not as versatile as paper, where arrows, diagrams and asides are much easier to insert.  Perhaps more important, the act of forming one’s own words and pictures makes the information more likely to stick in one’s mind.  Going through more parts of the brain means more chance of being retained.

But nowadays there are tablets.  A number of our tutor’s students use them.  One can type and draw and do multiple sorts of operations with keyboard and smart-pen, in several colors and styles.  It all looks very interesting, and one of our consultants even has one, though he’s not yet mastered it.  Again, though, the hand-operated parts of the product do need to be clear, and not all useful things can be typed.

Should we return to teaching (and grading) handwriting as a school subject?