Which write is right? The future of text....
There is a debate raging. Well that's a slight exaggeration; there is an ongoing polite discussion. And as far as I can tell, most of it is occurring inside my own head. So it's time to expand the scope of this critical conversation: the future of text communication.
Let's start with the first two dimensions (third and fourth to follow, be patient). Most folk would probably agree that handwriting, cursive or otherwise, is something worth learning. But the chances are, that learning to touch type is likely to be a more useful skill for our students in their future working lives. So just how much of their finite learning time should we be spending on perfecting handwriting compared to touch typing? Leaving aside the comparative potential benefits of each, to other skills such as motor control, grammar and spelling, what is the right approach?
I believe that if I were not a teacher, I would probably hardly ever handwrite anything. The benefits of recording text digitally so far outweigh the analogue version for me that it has to be a specific application such as writing a card, or a personal letter to my Granny, before I employ my 'bestest' joined-up handwriting.
So, if handwriting is becoming a dying art, much like calligraphy or darning socks, we should be teaching students to touch type instead, right?
Well, possibly not. Just as I regularly spurn my hard won cursive writing skills, isn't there a high probability that hours dedicated to getting above 40 words per minute touch typing will also be obsolete for our current students in their future working lives? With technology like Siri and Google Voice and other speech recognition applications (the third dimension), isn't it just a matter of time before writing, in the form of physically recording text, is relegated to a niche craft? And as fanciful as it might sound to us now, how long before speaking it out loud becomes passé as technology that can read our thoughts is developed? (The fourth dimension!)
What now?
So if handwriting is already dying, and typing is soon to be usurped, what should we be teaching our students as the best way to record their learning? The growth of various media as communication tools is relatively new (think writing - thousands of years old, recording sound, moving pictures etc just over 100 years), but will these ever be acceptable forms of communication for business and qualifications purposes? Will they be accepted as replacing written word? Or will they forever need to be accompanied by the artificially manufactured communication form of written text?
It would be foolish to predict, but I am a fool, so here are my best guesses:
- The world of education (in general) will be almost the last to carry on clinging to the written word as the mainstay of ideas communication, i.e. exams.
- Written language will cleave further into standard written and text speak.
- Accepted forms of ideas communication will continue to expand to absorb more specialist media as visual, audio and experiential communication tools continue to be developed and melded into different forms.
- An increasing range of tools will be available for producing written text and choosing the most appropriate will become a necessary skill of the writer.
So where does this leave us as present day educators? I guess that depends on whether you believe the potential for learning capacity is a finite measure, or infinite. If students have an infinite capacity to learn, and we can match this with our teaching, then the answer is easy; teach them every method. If students have a finite capacity for learning, or more likely - we have a finite capacity for teaching them, then we focus on what we think will be the most beneficial in their immediate future. But build within them the capacity to adapt, so when the time comes, they can be the entrepreneurs of change.
