Why are kids at a prestigious Connecticut private school so worried about the new version of the SAT and it’s essays? Not because of academic training, but because of lack of handwriting training.
At Greenwich Country Day, a prestigious Connecticut private school, computers have all but replaced pencil and paper. Typing instruction starts in second grade, and laptops are mandatory by seventh. Essays are typed, and often class notes are, too.
“As an adult in today’s work world, you don’t write anything,” said Carol Maoz, head of the upper school (grades 7-9), adding she couldn’t think of an occasion students would write out a longhand essay. “You type everything. There really is no need for proper handwriting.”
Maybe not — indeed, even notes get passed in class via text message these days.
But next spring, many of Country Day’s alumni, along with millions of other high school juniors, will have to write a very important, 25-minute longhand essay — as part of the new SAT. Nearly as many will write a new optional essay on the ACT.
The new tests are causing general anxiety for the high school class of 2006, guidance counselors report. And some students who think they’ll write a good essay are worried scorers won’t be able to decipher it, raising the question of whether penmanship should be getting more attention in the classroom.
Heh.
Perhaps we’ll hear complaints about how the new SAT discrimnates against rich (or at least technologically well-endowed) kids.
The obvious answer is to come up with a computer-based SAT, though that raises a whole different set of questions, so to speak.
Heck, I hate handwriting, but I do it a lot. The school failed these kids by not teaching them this important skill.
I don’t know how parents let it get to this point.
The skills learned in handwriting apply to other skill like drawing and drafting – I guess these parent just want there kids to be doctors and lawyers not architects and designers.
You mean you can’t do all those “drawing and drafting” things with PaintshopPro and AutoCAD?! I’m shocked! Shocked!
Umm, yeah…
As a person with Doctor like hand writing, you almost never need it in engineering anymore, except to write down things in meetings. CAD based programs (AutoCAD, Microstation, PRO-E, and all of the GIS programs) and old school items like Leroy Lettering Guides (for those doing ink on mylar, like I need to do 40% of the time) have eliminated the need for hand lettering drawings. In fact Back at the Flats, we had eliminated all of the old, linen, mylar, sepia, and paper drawings. Everything was converted to CAD.
And remember folks, the only people who have worse hand writing then Doctors are Engineers (“So…on this parts list, is this an “S” or a “5”?). The best people are old school designers that came up during the “Ink on Linen” days. Lettering that is a thing of beauty.
Actually, while I am a firm believer in folks being able to write legibly (stop snorting, Margie), I agree that, in engineering, at least, much of what used to be drafted is now done electronically. Many “heavily engineered” clients, faced with massive stick files and the like are frantically at least scanning them, and are faced with converting them into actual CAD drawings if they want to make modern use of them. It’s certainly something we’ve faced with our clients.
There are still cases where it’s faster, more convenient (esp. in meetings), etc., to draft something by hand before putting it into CAD, just as there are times when it’s faster sketch a quick flow chart rather than diving straight into a development system on the software side. Which gets back to the need to be able to scribble a note that’s legible. (Though even doctors, in places like K-P, do prescriptions at a keyboard, for just the illegibility problem described.)
Even in comics these days, the vast majority of lettering is done — for the finished product — electronically.
Being unable to understandably express yourself, esp. at length, though, without having a keyboard, seems like a recipe for disaster.