By John Lindstrom
Publisher
Posted: May 3, 2019 3:49 PM

There's a joke going around social media aimed at people of a certain age that if they want to make sure their children and grandchildren will never find out their secrets, they should write them down by hand and leave them in plain sight. The joke being that theoretically people below a certain age cannot read cursive writing so the secrets will be safe forever.

Rep. Brenda Carter (D-Pontiac) has something to say about that. She has introduced legislation requiring the Department of Education to develop a curriculum on teaching children cursive writing and make that available to the state's school districts. Many school districts, maybe most, have done away with teaching pupils to write in cursive.

Should her HB 4483 become law, it would add Michigan to the now more than a dozen states – Ohio was the latest – to have established at least a proposed curricula for teaching kids how to loop and connect letters, and at a minimum how to correctly hold a pen or pencil for the most efficient and less tiring manner of writing.

This goes beyond calligraphy and Spencerian script, reading old love letters between the grandparents and Mom's teenage diary, and the apparently growing – as well as expensive – hobby of collecting fountain pens and writing with exotic inks.

Handwriting was high tech for most of human history. Through letters, journals and official documents it kept alive all human activity. Development of items we take for granted, such as pencils and pens and inks – the development of iron ball ink was a major invention -- were in fact significant technologic developments, assuring transmission of information as well as recording the events that, at least theoretically, give us insight into current matters.

And, research shows handwriting plays a major in role in brain development, one that typing and God knows voice recording does not. That goes beyond just small children. Studies have shown college students who took notes in longhand remembered material better than did students who typed notes on a computer screen.

There are advocates who argue because typing has now totally dominated the world, kids should forget about learning handwriting, period. In which case, those who can write cursive probably could use it as a secret code and, dare one say it, take over the world. Okay, maybe that wouldn't happen.

This reporter, though, wonders if there are other benefits to handwriting such as forcing one to stare at something other than a screen. Doing that might help people notice other things, notice the real things of life not attached to a computer, like trees and flowers and a best friend's expression and the car that will run you over because your face is stuck looking at a phone while crossing the street.

Plus, learning handwriting means you can develop a truly distinguished signature, much like the Governor Gretchen Whitmer's very fine signature. One can tell she paid attention in handwriting class.