How the Ballpoint Pen Killed Cursive

"Fight for your Write” campaign—brought up an fMRI study suggesting that writing by hand may be better for kids’ learning than using a computer."

How about writing by hand ON a computer?

For me is totally stupid to teach kids to type on a keyboard, when in the present and near future you could use other faster and better means for writing, like this speech recognition I am using now or stenotype.

The other day I saw a friend using a new prototype of a new digital stenotype on a maker space and I was sold instantly. This is the future.

But children need to learn how to draw, and train their hands in precise manipulation. If you lose handwriting training when you are kid you also lose the ability of doing precise work with your hands as your brain will prune the neural connections with your hand as you don't use it.

You can do that on a computer. Today we have affordable galaxy notes. I use an expensive Cinqiq, that will become much more affordable in the future. Training kids looking at the rear mirror makes no sense to me.

As I said in another comment, if you use a fountain pen in a business setting (as I do), people look at you funny.

I was around 10 when erasers first appeared, and they were strictly forbidden during all my school years, because they tended to make a big mess (or a hole) in the paper. We were told to strike errors properly, with a ruler.

Today it's true that they are permitted, to my amazement.

Among my children's teachers, some recommend fountain pens, some say they dislike it, but mostly kids can use what they like best.

I call bullshit, in Russia people still write in cursive long after introduction of ballpoint pen, because that's what people are taught in school. It also happens to be much faster than print, regardless of the writing implement, so that helps too.

I take your point, but it has to be said that the copyists and e.g. book keepers in 19th and 20th century wrote more slowly and methodically than students scribbling in a lecture. As the author Rosemary Sassoon quoted in OA put it...

"most of us need a flexible way of writing—fast, almost a scribble for ourselves to read, and progressively slower and more legible for other purposes."

I have a suspicion that we mainly use pens/paper for the writing fast bits and the purposes for which slower writing was needed are now achieved using our keyboards.

My personal test for a pen of any kind is to hold it lightly between thumb and index finger, and then drag the pen down a page so that the only force pressing the nib/ball/tip onto the paper is the pen's own weight. If it leaves a line then I can use it without hand pain for fairly long periods. If it does not, then I'll use it mainly for shopping lists and post-it notes. Most but not all fountain pens pass that test as do some of the gel pens that produce wider lines such as the Uniball signos. Felt pens e.g. Sharpie fine points can pass the test as well!

As mentioned in a sibling comment to this, italic writing was taught in most UK schools for most of the 1960s onwards.

Quote from Rosemary Sassoon's book in the OA...

"We must find ways of holding modern pens that will enable us to write without pain. …We also need to encourage efficient letters suited to modern pens."

Can you describe the way you hold your pen when writing and perhaps comment on the way you form your letters? I'm interested as I find the ubiquitous Bic impossible for more than a couple of sides.