My chicken scratch handwriting is a window to the future

Anyone who knows me well knows that my handwriting is illegible, at best.

Me, I think my abstract squiggles can sometimes be pretty, like Chinese calligraphy - but who I am to judge. In other moments of deep thought I think of my writing as a miniature sped up version of the evolution of the logographic writing system, like Japanese Kanji (or think hieroglyphics, Egyptian or Mayan).

It’s not all that surprising really. What started out as my personally efficient way of taking down notes where the ‘e’ became an ‘a’ and the word ‘and’ condensed into ‘a’-squiggle-line has become a constant source of teasing for me. Anna maintains that my signature could just as easily spell her name. In my world the difference between ‘e’ and ‘a’ is a subtle stroke. These are all habits that I fear will only be reinforced as I spend more and more time typing rather than writing. In a few more years I’ll be able to tap out a Sonata on a piano better than I can write a letter.

So where am I going with all of this? Well, people, you better get used to bad handwriting. Cause it looks like the future generations are getting left out.

Here’s what Canada.com has to say about a recent study by academics from five American universities into handwriting:

Teachers reported spending an average 70 minutes a week on cursive. This amounts to roughly 14 minutes per day - far shorter than the 45 daily minutes recommended in the 1960s and ‘70s, and slightly less than the 15 minutes mandated in the ‘80s.

But this is bad, because the same study found that how nicely a kid writes determines their grades. Teachers tended to think that kids with better handwriting had better ideas, and therefore got better grades. This might seem unfair and biased until you realize that if no one can decrypt what you’re writing saying in handwriting, they certainly can’t judge it let alone mark it.

Personally I loved our handwriting lessons in school. Those fantastic notebooks with the dotted lines that let you figure out exactly how high your lower case letters should be. It was practically an art lesson with some literacy thrown in: heaven.