Handwriting

Some years back, a colleague informed me, “Learning a new font of handwriting builds more connections in the brain than any other activity.” He claimed to have the studies to back it up. I was intrigued, so I began to experiment with my class back when I taught at Asheville Waldorf School (AWS).

The results were incredible, and by that I mean this. My class was generally well-behaved but quite chatty, even in the most intriguing lessons. However, when we we learning cursive, a new font, or calligraphy, you could have heard a pin drop. The memory of thirty or so minutes of virtually effortless silence it etched in my soul. There’s a reason for that which we’ll get to later.

While almost all schools are replacing handwriting, particularly cursive, with typing from an early age, the Waldorf method is ever-expanding our handwriting repertoire. We begin teaching cursive usually around third grade. In fourth grade, we introduce a runic font to augment our studies of Norse Myths. Later, in fifth grade, we play with cuneiform, hieroglyphics, and Greek characters as part of our Ancient Civilizations blocks. By sixth grade, we introduce formal calligraphy with Rome and the Middle Ages. Then, in seventh and eighth grades, we just continue expanding our font set. The sky is the limit! We can do Arabic-type fonts, Celtic fonts, even Sanskrit-inspired calligraphy.

The Science of Handwriting

So, why exactly did handwriting focus my class more than any other activity? Studies are indeed showing strong correlations between handwriting, learning, and memory. In fact, it looks as though a focused period of handwriting creates brainwaves similar to those experienced in deep meditation. Interesting.

Now, that’s “mainstream” science, but spiritual science alike has something to say about this. According to a lecture entitled “Overcoming Nervousness,” consciously changing one’s handwriting strengthens the life body. In other words, it is that body which sustains our life and keeps us feeling well. It just so happens, also according to spiritual science, that we can educate this life body beginning around age 7, in other words, the grade school years. In fact, these years are the most opportune to teach the habits of life, including those activities which will strengthen individuals for life.

What’s at Stake in the Choice to Teach Handwriting or Not

Another colleague back at AWS informed me of a different study. (We had an awesome faculty, by the way.) She said researchers had noted that recent graduates of MIT, while technically just as brilliant as they’d ever been, were yet less creative than ever before. So, we are talking about individuals born around the year 2000 or after. In other words, they are the video gaming, cell phone, tablet generation. The question was, “Why is this happening? Why do they lack the ability to thinking creatively?” The answer was because growing up they spent the majority of their time pressing buttons rather than doing skillful things with their fingers. This is also the generation whose teachers started sidelining handwriting for typing, in classrooms. In neurological terms, that’s sort of like saying, “Using a fork to put food in my mouth is exercising.” Yeah, no.

What is the mystery here? It is this – that what we do with our fingers, hands, and limbs as children becomes our thinking later on in life. The point is proven by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman who was once asked how he became such a brilliant and creative thinker. His reply was that when he was a young boy, his parents would lock him out of the house to play. Behind their house was a junkyard where he would go and tinker for hours, taking things apart, putting them back together, and building new things. All of this fine-motor finger activity became his thinking later in life.

The (Hand)Writing on the Wall

Need I say more? In an increasingly technocratic culture, where we enjoy more convenience than ever before, what are we simultaneously losing? I say that even in this world of technology, it’s vital to preserve what builds our human capacities. Handwriting is one of those skills our grandparents’ generation took for granted, but it’s quickly being lost. Don’t let that happen to your children and rob them of its gifts.