Handwringing and Handwriting: The End of a Great Debate (For Now)

Why is that teaching reading and writing is such a constant battleground? Adults fight over it, stage protests in Washington DC about it, form marching bands like the Mothers of Liberty. My God, one side crucified researcher Lucy Calkins for her brilliant soldiering at the Battle of Three Cue Hill. All while worshipping Siegfried Englemann and his holy scripts.

The clash reaches to levels of obnoxious that frustrates even the most stoic among us. If it isn’t how to go about pronouncing a word, it’s how to go about spelling a word. Invent a spelling? What the heck? We’ve had intense civil battles about changing the spelling system, and still some people insist the alphabet we use in ordinary life must be altered for beginning readers and writers, though no one can agree on a replacement.

If it isn’t how to write, it’s what to write about. Second graders ought to be writing about Ancient Greece, life in Sparta! No, they should be writing about Christmas with the grandparents! No, religion has no place in the writing classroom! Make it plain vanilla some say. “The dog chased the cat.” No, no, no—too much violence? Why can’t we all just get along?

If it isn’t how to read, it’s what to read. One army believes in keeping meaning out of reading until readers lip their poppers, drop their jaws, silence their E’s, and dipth their thongs with total accuracy. Until then, nonsense. Nothing but cat sat on a fat rat til the rat croaks.

We fight over colors, whether to use blue pens or red pens to give feedback. We fight over commas, whether to a, b, and c or to a, b and c.

We argue about whether children should be allowed to look at the pictures in storybooks. I’m surprised they haven’t written a law charging children’s authors with some crime or other if they use a picture suggesting the pronunciation of a printed word.

“There I go again, sketching that darn horse. Such a simple word. Four silent letters and that magical 'or' sound in the middle. But dare I draw him? My pencil hovers over the paper, trembling with desire.

Look at him there, the happy horse I've sketched, wearing that ridiculous party hat. So funny! See? The hat tilts just so, making the 'or' shape with its cone. Pure coincidence, I'll swear to the authorities. ‘Your Honor, I never meant to suggest pronunciation through visual aids! The hat was purely festive!’

But who am I kidding? Won't some sharp-eyed prosecutor skilled in the dark art of linguistics see how the curve of the horse's neck mirrors the 'h'? How the tail could be seen as that final 'e'? They're watching us illustrators now, hunting for hidden phonics in everything we draw.

What's next? Will they ban drawing cows because the curve of the horns suggests the 'ow' sound? Must every cat in every children's book be drawn facing forward, lest its profile hint at the 'at' sound?

The absurdity of it all! Here I am, a grown artist, fretting over whether a party hat might land me in jail. When did helping children connect images to words become an act of rebellion? Should every picture book be filled with abstract shapes that carefully avoid any hint of phonetic suggestion?

Maybe I'll just draw a blank page. But wait – wouldn't the whiteness itself suggest the silence between sounds? Is there no escape from this madness?

Oh, to hell with it. The horse stays. The hat stays. Let them come for me and my phonetic party hat. Some hills are worth dying on, even if they're shaped like the letter 'h'.

***

As I understand it, handwriting and its teaching was officially discontinued in 2010 after the Common Core State Standards championed by a well-intentioned group of centrists eschewed the hand drawing of letters for the finger plinking of keys.

What happened in practice is anybody’s guess. Some teachers probably sweated it out in their classrooms, keeping the evidence of moral turpitude locked away in filing cabinets. That infamous hefty comforting brown cursive paper midway between a brown paper bag and very thin cardboard was stashed away with a supply of chunky round pencils.

Others, nagged with doubts, stopped teaching handwriting cold turkey. Keyboards, yes, keyboards seemed like the keys to the future. The irony of a teacher writing manuscript on a chalk board to teach youngsters the placement of letters on keys eluded those swept up in the moment.

Then came the backlash. The restoration of cursive was “primarily coming from the right,” said Morgan Polikoff¹, an associate professor of education at USC’s Rossier School of Education. Advocates argued that cursive connects students to historical documents in their original form and reinforces traditional values. As of today in 2024 the teaching of cursive is the law of the land in California², whose Governor has his own dyslexic child.

Somewhere around 2016 conservatives saw the resurrection of cursive to be a jab at the Common Core and the perceived overreach on education policy by the Obama administration. Cursive also was traditional and provided direct access to historical documents, they argued. Sue Pimentel, an original member of the Core team, walked back the Core stance on handwriting that year:

“We thought that more and more of student communications and adult communications are via technology. And knowing how to use technology to communicate and to write was most critical for students.” (Sue Pimentel, 2016).³

What forced Pimentel to negotiate a durable peace with the other generals was this: From sea to shining sea, grandparents were pissed that their grandchildren could not read their notes in their Christmas cards. They say relationships are really the core of schooling. Who knew?

2016 was a watershed year for cursive. California Democratic state Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva was working with then-California Gov. Jerry Brown at a public event. He was signing the equivalent of baseball cards featuring his dog, Colusa.

Many of the youngsters couldn’t read his cursive signature. “The governor asked me what I did” before becoming a legislator, she is quoted as saying. “I said I was a teacher, and he said, ‘You have to bring back cursive writing.’”⁴

***

What’s happened to handwriting is of a piece with what’s happened with phonics over the past several years. Obviously, rightly or wrongly, each has been a burning issue in contemporary schooling.

Regardless of the scientific facts of the case, the army of laypeople who claim rights to science seek out and cherry pick “research”’to load into their rhetorical cannons. The difference is it’s easier to spot the fallacies in “scientific” arguments in favor of teaching cursive. We needed Rob Tierney and David Pearson⁵, two highly respected reading scientists, to thoroughly debunk the faux science of SoR. Not so with SoW.

Don’t get me wrong. Using my common sense, I’ve wondered how it would work in a world without paper and pencil. I mean, I wasn’t having nightmares or anything, but for the life of me I couldn’t see where “the Science of Handwriting” (SoW) would need to turn to neuroscience to prove their case. Seemed fairly obvious no?

Neuroscientists know quite a lot about specific areas of the brain that become active during transcription, the word for getting words down on paper or screen. Interestingly, fMRI and EEG studies of the brain during writing reveal differences in brain activity depending on whether the writer is handwriting or typing.

Unfortunately, the authors of this research study⁶ I’m highlighting don’t fill us in on the embedded writing situation, i.e., what was being written about, for whom, for what purpose. Were I involved in the design of this study, I might have offered the following paragraph to raise this issue:

“To Research Team: Give these instructions to each study subject—Before beginning this intimate act of handwritten correspondence with a dear friend, gather a quality fountain pen with matching ink cartridges or bottle, premium cream linen stationery, and essential materials like blotting paper and a clean cloth for pen maintenance.

Test the pen's flow on scrap paper while mentally drafting key points and considering your recipient. Position yourself at a properly lit writing surface, paper angled comfortably, with blotting paper protecting against smudges. Have an envelope ready for immediate storage once the ink dries. This careful preparation honors both the physical craft of handwriting and the emotional investment in personal correspondence.”

Because this was my deep dive into this handwringing handwriting debate, I thought I would try to embody myself in the act for which the instructions above would have prepared me.

So I imagined a quality fountain pen, a tough ask because I’ve never used one. My pen would have to have a cartridge, though I might want to tuck an ink bottle into my scene for a prop.

Having zero experience writing on creamy expensive stationary, I would be nervous about writing even one letter. My handwriting sucks. I’m beginning to feel happy that this is imaginary. I think I’ll take it out for a test drive. So let me flip the switch in my brain and shift into imaginative mode, sensual, sensuous. Do you hear me, Brain?

“The heavy cream

[eclairs anyone? paper puffs]

paper whispers,

[it doesn’t whisper, what are you saying, don’t be cheesy]

rubs against my fingertips as I uncap my fountain pen

[is there a sexual innuendo here??]

[There’s touch].

A soft click

]sound]

[oh ok yeah the fingers smoothing the stationery could sound like whispering]

and the nib meets the page

[this is obscene dude]

with a scratch, deep blue ink pooling in soft

[scratch ok yeah but the metaphor too much touch??]

furrows

[omg]

of letters before absorption

[eyes]

[turn down the cheeze whiz in here]

Loops and curves of cursive writing

[nice rhythm! proprioception, checkmark]

take my hand to dance

[good, a little Jane Austen twinkling]

a heel resting on my hand’s cool surface skin [

[eh that’s a bit awkward]

while my fingers guide the pen's fluid dance steps

[o geez too too much am I dancing with the pen, the paper, or what?].

The paper carries a faint vanilla scent

[eclairs? a dance floor like an eclair?)

amidst a metallic echo of ink

[Who are you kidding? You know nothing about the smell of expensive ink but I bet the echo of metallic hides it].

My thoughts flow through arm to hand to page

[watch the Velvita]

[should I mention my eyes???]

letters form in personal shapes forensically identifiable as my handwriting

[I like THIS! You Go, Imagination!!{

creating handcuffs between writer and recipient.

{Ok, now we’re getting somewhere…]”

Think of it like this: What's the difference between holding a pencil, activating fine motor skills vis a vis fingers and hand, segmenting phonemes at lightening speed, recalling spelling patterns, fixating the eyes on the parchment, feeling the texture of the paper, inscribing the letter 'q,' connecting the tail of the 'q' to the predictable 'u' that follows—versus hitting a key 'q' on the keyboard while relying on spellcheck to catch errors?

Trading the pen for a keyboard with spellcheck trades hand movements for finger poking and could definitely reduce engagement with speech sounds and spelling patterns. The degree to which phonemic analysis is required for typing seems tantalizingly different from scribing. The articled cited in footnote six concludes the following:

“A recent EEG-study from our lab showed that drawing by hand causes more activity and involves larger areas in the brain as opposed to typing on a keyboard (Van der Meer and Van der Weel, 2017). We concluded that the involvement of fine and intricate hand movements in note-taking, in contrast with pressing keys on a keyboard that all require the same simple finger movement, may be more advantageous for learning.”

I have no doubt that these findings are valid and reliable as reported in the study. I do, however, find the giant leap of faith the researchers are asking readers to make to be indefensible. This leap is exactly the same leap SoR neuroscience asks readers to make about phonics.

Asking a hand with a wrist and five fingers to do what fingers alone can do seems on the face of it to bring more brain matter into the moment.

It makes sense that differences in quantity and type of motor activity mapped onto the brain during analysis of fMRI data would be noted depending on hand writing or keyboarding. What would be surprising is if there were no differences.

But how does one get from these fMRI findings and the assertion that handwriting “may be more advantageous for learning than keyboarding”? By this logic, not just AI should be banned. Keyboards should be banned.

The handwriting versus typing debate parallels the broader AI discussion in education in that both center on how technology might be changing cognitive processes and learning. Just as fMRI studies show reduced brain activation with typing versus handwriting, concerns about AI focus on potential cognitive offloading and reduced mental engagement. However, the leap from brain activity to the conclusion of educational advantage or disadvantage is problematic in both cases.

A more nuanced analysis might ask “How do different tools, whether pen, keyboard, or AI, alter the cognitive tasks involved in writing?” Instead of banning keyboards or AI, educators might take a rational approach and study how these tools affect different aspects of learning and composition in the real world.

Why do we insist on proof from neuroscience to tell us about human learning when this science isn't about learning at all? Neuroscience primarily studies the physical structures and mechanisms of the brain—its neurons, synapses, and chemical processes.

While these elements form the biological foundation that makes learning possible, they don't directly explain how humans acquire knowledge, develop understanding, or master new skills.

Asking for evidence of brain function in human learning is like trying to understand the plot of a novel by analyzing the chemical composition of ink and paper. Just as literature emerges from but transcends its physical medium, learning is an emergent phenomenon that cannot be reduced to mere neural activity.

Confirmation bias among writing teachers favoring traditional methods can cloud objective analysis of both typing and AI's potential benefits and drawbacks. It’s ok to teach handwriting not because handwriting is essential to learning to compose (it isn’t) but because it is essential in classrooms, offices, businesses, politics—and grandparents want their grandchildren to be able to read Christmas cards.

A better framework would examine specific contexts. When might handwriting better serve learning—not because of its inherent superiority, but because of its efficacy? When might keyboard or AI tools better serve composition? Rather than wholesale adoption or rejection, the focus should be on understanding how each modality affects different writing tasks and learning objectives.

***

This experiment conflates quantity of brain activation with quality of learning, a conflation which isn't supported by neuroscience no matter how much the Science of Reading wants it so. It's a fundamental misunderstanding that more neural activity automatically equals better learning.

Brain imaging studies showing increased activation in certain regions tell us where processing is occurring, but not whether that processing is efficient, effective, or leading to meaningful learning outcomes. In fact, as learners become more skilled at a task, they often show decreased neural activation, a sign of automation and expertise rather than deficiency.

Is it the neural activation that caused learning that caused deactivated neural activity? Or is it that learning itself leads to more efficient neural pathways, requiring less activation to accomplish the same task?

This chicken-and-egg question reveals a crucial flaw in how brain imaging studies are often interpreted in educational contexts. When we see reduced neural activity in expert performers, whether they're skilled readers, musicians, or mathematicians, we're observing the end result of learning, not its mechanism.

I’m not a neuroscientist, but I am a teacher and an education researcher. Based on my emerging understanding of neuroscience, the process of learning actually creates more streamlined neural networks, pruning away unnecessary connections and strengthening efficient pathways.

Beginners often show more widespread brain activation because they arebusing multiple neural pathways to accomplish what an expert does with a more refined, specialized network. The Science of Reading's interpretation of neural activation patterns often gets this backwards, mistaking the cognitive noise of struggle for evidence of effective learning, while potentially dismissing the quiet efficiency of expertise.

This misunderstanding has led to questionable educational practices based on a fundamental misreading of what neural activation patterns actually tell us about learning.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Unfortunately, this misunderstanding has resulted in legislation making it possible for unquestionably stellar education researchers like Marie Clay and Lucy Calkins to be denigrated and even sued in court for following the science of learning rather than neuroscience.

The Science of Reading movement, in its eagerness to claim neurological legitimacy, oversimplifies these complex relationships. They point to brain scan images with bright colors lighting up as "proof" of effective instruction, while ignoring that a struggling reader might show more activation precisely because they're struggling—and the teaching method may have little to do with it.

This circumstance represents a broader problem in education where neuroscientific findings are cherry-picked and oversimplified to support predetermined pedagogical positions, rather than engaging with the full complexity of how learning actually occurs. Brain science is revolutionizing our understanding of individual human consciousness, and it explains the mechanisms underlying cognitive activity important in learning.

But it doesn’t explain what Vygotsky called the social transference of mind. It doesn’t explain why children of poverty do not learn to read as effectively on average as well as affluent children. It doesn’t explain the expertise responsive teachers learn from years of teaching. Valuable? Yes. Medically significant? Definitely. The final word on teaching effectiveness? Not even close.

1. https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2024/jan/15/learning-cursive-in-school-long-scorned-as-obsolet

2. https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2024/jan/15/learning-cursive-in-school-long-scorned-as-obsolet

3. https://patch.com/us/across-america/22-states-are-reviving-cursive-kids-cant-read-grandmas-card

4. https://missouriindependent.com/2023/11/28/cursive-makes-a-comeback-by-law-in-public-schools/

5. https://radicalscholarship.com/2024/04/03/recommended-fact-checking-the-science-of-reading/

6. https://www.openread.academy/en/paper/reading?corpusId=503252214&utm_source=perplexity