Back to handwriting?

“When you’re writing by hand, you need to know where you’re going with a sentence — what you want it to say, and the structure it will take — before you begin,” writes Heid. “Typing on a computer requires far less forethought; you can dump out the contents of your brain and then hammer it into shape.” That’s “less challenging for the brain — and challenging the brain is central to education itself.”

Of course, many students haven’t learned how to write in cursive, and teachers may not want to return to the challenge of reading bad handwriting. …

Linguist John McWhorter doesn’t see much point to making students learn cursive. It’s as useful as knowing how to decipher Roman numerals, he argues in the New York Times.

I learned cursive in fourth grade using a (required) Scripto cartridge pen. When the ink didn’t flow, we’d flick the pen and send ink blots flying on the page — and sometimes on our classmates. Not till junior high school were we allowed to use ballpoint pens. New technology!

[I was and still am terrible at cursive, which I only use for signatures and the almost-equally archaic practice of writing checks. — Ed]