There's a lot of talk these days about the death of handwriting. Conservatives, especially, bemoan it right along with the "dumbing down" of history and English. There was a time when I, too, fretted about it and put it in the same category as "slouching towards Gomorrah."

No longer. For the past twenty years I've been trying to convince fellow homeschooling parents to lighten up, especially in the last decade as we've become less and less dependent on anything handwritten. I get static from the folks who believe if it's old it must be better than anything new, but I respectfully disagree. More than once I've used the example that when I graduated high school in 1972 you weren't considered educated if you couldn't use a slide rule. My kids don't know what a slide rule is, and I'd bet money that most of you can't use one even if you have a vague idea of how it worked.

Lovely handwriting is just that: lovely. But it is not a necessity and it will become even less relied on than it is at this dawning of the millennium. I love it that my best friend has beautiful handwriting and that I get to see it when she sends me a card in the snail mail. But I will not put the burden on my children and grandchildren to develop a skill which has no real relevance in modern life unless they have a particular interest in it.

With that disclaimer, I invite you to read but will not take part in TIME magazine's

Mourning the Death of Handwriting

Labels: Education, Homeschooling, Technology