Global Crisis

There's a handwriting system that my son's teachers use called "Handwriting without Tears." They have an app (that I don't really like) and all kinds of classroom curricula (which teachers seem to like). I always laugh a little at the name, because for me, handwriting caused tears.

As an adult, I've come to terms with my quirky brain and dyslexia and my general trouble with spatial relations. I have the fine motor control to play instruments, but something about trying to form shapes and letters on pages was and is very difficult for me. I can do basic clear printing with intense concentration.

Throughout elementary school, I was criticized for my handwriting. I remember my mother once going through weeks or months of papers, trying to figure out how to improve my handwriting (a very sharp pencil was one suggestion). It wasn't just my dyslexia, I was also sloppy, though I've come to see certain kinds of sloppiness as a coping mechanism for my strange brain (i.e. if I intentionally screw up, then I don't have to wonder why my brain doesn't work right). At any rate, I hated writing and my handwriting is a disaster.

When I was in 8th grade, we got a personal computer with an early word processing program. It changed my life. It divorced the act of writing from the act of forming letters with my hands. A typewriter could have done the same, but using a typewriter was not normal for 7th graders, whereas the new age of computers changed things. As I am now steeped in the world of assistive technology for my son, I think back on the computer and the word processing program as my own form of assistive tech. Anyway, as Sara Hendren regularly argues, all technology is assistive technology, from motorized wheelchairs to shoes to hearing aids to glasses.

I'm writing this in the wake of many friends sharing a New York Times piece lamenting the end of handwriting teaching.

Psychologists and neuroscientists say it is far too soon to declare handwriting a relic of the past. New evidence suggests that the links between handwriting and broader educational development run deep.

Children not only learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand, but they also remain better able to generate ideas and retain information. In other words, it’s not just what we write that matters — but how.

“When we write, a unique neural circuit is automatically activated,” said Stanislas Dehaene, a psychologist at the Collège de France in Paris. “There is a core recognition of the gesture in the written word, a sort of recognition by mental simulation in your brain.

A 2012 study led by Karin James, a psychologist at Indiana University, lent support to that view. Children who had not yet learned to read and write were presented with a letter or a shape on an index card and asked to reproduce it in one of three ways: trace the image on a page with a dotted outline, draw it on a blank white sheet, or type it on a computer. They were then placed in a brain scanner and shown the image again.

The researchers found that the initial duplication process mattered a great deal. When children had drawn a letter freehand, they exhibited increased activity in three areas of the brain that are activated in adults when they read and write: the left fusiform gyrus, the inferior frontal gyrus and the posterior parietal cortex.

Let's assume that all of this is correct. The value here isn't handwriting, but the neurological processes that accompany handwriting.

Handwriting is going away. Not scribbling quick notes on pads, but the era of formal cursive handwriting, the very form of handwriting that seems to most provide these neurological benefits, is coming to an end.

The solution is not to lament the loss of cursive and not to force kids to learn cursive anyway, despite its lack of utility, but rather to find other means to stimulate related neurological processes. Is it art? Is it rock climbing? Is it baking bread? I don't know, but let's not confuse means with outcome.

Update: On ableism and handwriting, please read this wonderful post from my friend Rick Godden.

Not Nico's Actual Bus

"It's so sad when people have special needs."

A caring, sweet, 4th-grader said this to me at the bus stop a few minutes ago. My son and I crossed the street, running and laughing, happy. Then he asked me to go see a dog that was being walked across the grass, I said no, we had to go get in line for the bus, so he said no to me, and then pouted. Nico is really developing his pout lately.

The girl, M, came over and reached out her hands to Nico asking if she could help. He said, passionately, "No!" Then she turned to me and smiled and said, "It's so sad when people have special needs."

It's one of those moments when, as a parent, words fall with a kind of physical force. It's not that they hurt, at least not in this case, but for me my whole body tenses in these kinds of interactions. I know, or I suspect, that I'm hitting a moment in which I might shape language, perception, action, reaction, and more - not just for my son, but for anyone this child interacts with who has special needs, and her friends and family.

If I handle it right, I hope, I might help build a more inclusive society and I might even manage to erode the gap between help and friendship (seriously, follow that link. It's really interesting).

I said, "I don't think having special needs is sad. I think it can be sad when people with special needs don't get the help they need, and even worse when they don't have a good community of friends and family around them."

M. thought about this and said, "I used to help my grandpa. He was in a wheelchair because of the war and his leg."

I replied, "Exactly, and imagine if he didn't have you and your family and his friends not just to help push his chair, but to be his granddaughter, to be his friends, and to make sure he has what he needs. And if our community didn't build wheelchair ramps or automatic doors, so he couldn't have moved around."

She nodded. Then the bus came and I had to get my surly boy onto his feet and onto the bus, which he did with only mild protest, surrounding by his aide and three girls, M, F and H, with G waiting for him on the bus.

I'm not quite satisfied with my answer, but I'll keep working on it.

Two other stories about inclusion and the girls who go to school with my son. And yeah, it's pretty much the girls, a sign of the ways that girls are pushed towards caregiving early, but that's another essay.

I've written about H before, back on the first days of school, when she included herself with Nico in a way that made me weep. She comes over and has playdates sometimes, and while she and my daughter have a beautiful big-sister/little-sister relationship, she's never satisfied just playing with Ellie for all my daughter provides her with an imaginative hyperverbal playmate for their games. Instead, every few minutes, she breaks away to go find Nico and see if she can bring him in. Sometimes, it works. On Sunday, the three kids sat huddled in a corner of couch passing two ipads around, giggling and happy. It was so powerfully inclusive, especially given that Nico had refused to participate in my daughter's birthday party earlier that day (too many kids, too loud, too hot).

F, on the other hand, lives across the street, but I haven't really processed her relationship with Nico. She's quiet, or at least a bunch of the other neighborhood kids are really loud. Two Fridays ago, though, Nico's aide wasn't on the bus and F was one of the girls who volunteered to help. It didn't go well at all, but everyone made it home safely.

Monday morning, though, I saw F with a plastic bag with little rectangles of paper, pencil drawings, and words written on it. I asked her what they were and discovered that she was trying to replicate one of the communication systems that the teachers and aides use for Nico. They carry a bunch of communication cards (bathroom, thirsty, desk, marker, etc. They look more or less like this.) to supplement the use of an Ipad-based communication program. F decided to make her own cards. As near as I can tell, no one told her to do this or helped her - she just observed what the teachers were doing and decided to generate her own assistive technology.

So, M, thinking more about the community in which my son lives, I can say pretty strongly that it is not so sad when people have special needs. Thanks to you and his other friends who are trying to do their best to create a more inclusive society. I'll do what I can to help you.