Maybe the educational policymakers in Michigan should take another look at teaching handwriting in the public schools.

The topic has been discussed for years, but with handwriting thought by many an obsolete skill and computer keyboarding commanding more time in schools, handwriting instruction has increasingly fallen by the wayside.

But now, multiple research studies and modern brain imaging technology have produced evidence that teaching children handwriting is important in learning letters and likely makes them better readers.

Because reading is of such importance to a child’s success in school and in adult life, the parents of school age children in Michigan will likely find this topic of great interest; especially since Michigan policymakers adopted, (p.20), and implemented the Common Core State Standards in K-12 public schools statewide; despite the fact that handwriting standards are not included in the common-core.

In 2012, Dr. Karin Harman James, a neuroscientist and Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University, conducted important research about the effect that handwriting has on pre-literate children learning letters and subsequently on learning to read. Her research studies are numerous and widely recognized for thoroughness, reliability and accuracy.

In a landmark study titled, The effects of handwriting experience on functional brain development in pre-literate children, Dr. James wanted to know if teaching handwriting in an increasingly technological world, is still relevant today.

In the study’s Abstract she outlines the question, then foretells the answer:

In an age of increasing technology, the possibility that typing on a keyboard will replace handwriting raises questions about the future usefulness of handwriting skills. Here we present evidence that brain activation during letter perception is influenced in different, important ways by previous handwriting of letters versus previous typing or tracing of those same letters… These findings demonstrate that handwriting is important for the early recruitment in letter processing of brain regions known to underlie successful reading. (Abstract, p.1) [Emphasis added]

The study included fifteen, pre-literate children age 4 to 5 years old. The children were shown letters and shapes printed on index cards and asked to duplicate the images on paper multiple times by means of free-form printing, tracing and single-key typing.

At the end of the training period, each child underwent a functional MRI (fMRI), brain imaging session where they were again shown the letters and shapes while their brain activity was recorded. The results were dramatic.

Researchers reported the following:

First, we compared letter recognition after printing letters versus after typing letters. There was significantly more neural activation after printing letters than after typing them… Next, we compared letter perception after printing…versus after tracing… Here, greater neural activation after printing was observed… Finally, the comparison of activation during letter perception after…tracing letters versus after…typing letters, found greater activation…after tracing…but no areas of greater activation after typing. (Sec. 3.10., p.8,) [Emphasis added]

The most compelling evidence however, was observed in those parts of the brain associated with reading. Researchers call it the “reading circuit.” Using fMRI technology to show regions of the brain that are active during specific tasks, the results revealed that the ‘reading circuit’ was activated during letter perception only after handwriting the letters — and not after typing or tracing them.

Researchers recorded the findings this way:

A previously documented ‘reading circuit’ was recruited during letter perception only after handwriting — not after typing or tracing experience. These findings demonstrate that handwriting is important for the early recruitment in letter processing of brain regions known to underlie successful reading. Handwriting therefore may facilitate reading acquisition in young children. (Abstract, p.1); Overall, the results of this study support the hypothesis that after self-generated printing experience, letter perception in the young child recruits components of the reading systems in the brain more than other forms of sensory-motor practice. …Thus, after printing practice, the brain activates a network used for reading and writing.“ (4. Discussion); [Emphasis added]

However, the issue here is not whether the public schools should teach computer keyboarding, but rather that handwriting should also be taught. And while the education policymakers in some states like Michigan adopted the common-core as is, without handwriting standards, thirteen other states developed policies assuring that handwriting would be taught in their state’s public schools.

One of them is Kansas.

In the Introduction of the Kansas Handwriting Curricular Standards, (p.5-6), a Committee of rural and urban teachers from public and private schools, literacy coaches, occupational therapists and university English professors completed an extensive review of the literature, then made clear the importance of providing children with handwriting instruction.

They wrote:

Children need handwriting instruction to succeed in their schools and later in the world of college and work… Handwriting is a foundational skill crucial for literacy success. It teaches letter formation and supports reading and language acquisition… Additionally, through perceptual and motor skills practice, handwriting advances neurological development and augments writing automaticity. Learning to write the manuscript letters of the alphabet leads directly to reading acquisition. According to the National Reading Panel, letter knowledge and phonemic awareness are the two best predictors of reading proficiency. Writing letters by hand has been proven to help children recognize and remember letters more easily than if they typed them (James, 2012; Longcamp et al., 2005; Berninger et al., 2002, 2006; NICHD, 2000). Writing by hand engages the brain in learning. Through modern brain-imaging techniques, researchers have found that neural activity in children who practiced manuscript by hand was far more advanced than children who just looked at the letters. Handwriting, based on empirical evidence from neuroscience, seems to play a large role in visual recognition and learning of letters. (James & Atwood, 2009; James & Gauthier, 2006; James, Wong, & Jobard, 2010; Longcamp et al., 2008). [Emphasis added].

The Kansas Committee also found that handwriting even affected student test scores as well:

Standardized essay scores are influenced by handwriting. More troubling, solid research finds that handwritten tests are graded differently based on the legibility of the handwriting (Graham & Harris, 2002; Conti, 2012; Vander Hart et al., 2010). Poor handwriting can drop a paper from the 50th percentile to the 10th or 22nd percentile (Graham, Harris, & Herbert, 2011). Essay graders of handwritten standardized tests read more than 100 essays an hour, making legibility even more important (ACT, 2011); (p.6) [Emphasis added]

But the benefit of teaching children handwriting doesn’t stop there. It extends past K-12 schooling to college. In fact in a 2014 study of comprehension and the note-taking practices of college students titled, The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note taking, researchers Daniel Oppenheimer and Pam Mueller compared the effectiveness of students writing their classroom lecture notes longhand versus typing them on a laptop.

The findings demonstrated that those who took notes on laptops scored significantly worse on conceptual questions about the material, as well as after review of their notes a week later.

In the study’s Abstract, the authors wrote:

The present research suggests that even when laptops are used solely to take notes, they may still be impairing learning because their use results in shallower processing. In three studies, we found that students who took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who took notes longhand. We show that whereas taking more notes can be beneficial, laptop notetakers tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim, rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words, is detrimental to learning. [Abstract p.1] [Emphasis added].

So in Kansas, handwriting education starts early.

The Birth to Age Five curriculum, begins by providing parents and preschool teachers with handwriting standards for children to learn fine motor skills, to grasp and transfer objects, hand-eye coordination and the ability to hold writing tools properly to form basic shapes and strokes.

The Kindergarten to Sixth Grade standards include the learning of letters and numbers both in manuscript and cursive, and demonstrating handwriting skills in legible handwritten work for effective communication.

Yet, despite compelling evidence that handwriting is important to children learning letters and the acquisition of reading skills, one of the lead authors of the common-core’s English language-arts standards affirmed that the omission of cursive handwriting was not an oversight, but rather a choice to emphasize technology.

In an October 16, 2016 Education Week interview for PBS, she noted,

“We thought that more and more of student communications and adult communications are via technology. And knowing how to use technology to communicate and to write was most critical for students,” she said. “The idea is you have to pick things to put in there…” One of the things we were thinking is that if we put cursive writing in, there would be all this practice of forming your letters. But if we didn’t have it in there, it wasn’t that teachers wouldn’t teach it, it’s that it wouldn’t have [as much] emphasis. [Emphasis added]

As a result, not only is the handwriting de-emphasis prediction coming true in Michigan which has no state handwriting standards as it once did; but because the common-core now determines most of what is taught in Michigan public schools; and because teachers are expected to teach to the common-core standards in preparation for Michigan’s high stakes testing on the SAT, the Merit Exam, the M-STEP exam, the proposed-to-be-revised M-STEP exam and the yet-to-come Smarter Balanced Assessment computerized exam, finding the wherewithal to teach handwriting has become increasingly difficult. A fact supported by a 2013 national survey which found that 41% percent of the elementary school teachers surveyed, no longer provide cursive writing instruction.

And now in Michigan, to provide help for an increasing number of elementary school children with reading difficulties including the 72% of Michigan Fourth graders that the 2015 NAEP test pegged as not proficient, there has been an additional state led school-fixing effort going on.

In October 2016, Michigan lawmakers enacted Public Act 306 of 2016, a seven page reading proficiency law that among other things, requires third graders to pass a state-approved reading test in order to be promoted to fourth grade. The recommendation came from a Third Grade Reading Workgroup appointed in 2015 to analyze third grade reading scores and to suggest ways to improve them. The 2016 Michigan law, modeled after a 2002 Florida statute, is apparently thought the best solution.

Yet, collectively absent from the Third Grade Reading Workgroup report, the Florida statute, and the multiple pages of reading interventions listed in the Michigan law, is any mention of teaching children handwriting as an effective way to develop letter perception and reading acquisition skills; which compelling brain research evidence indicates would likely result.

Still, adding handwriting education to the local school curriculum will require solving a related problem that’s been coming for years.

In a 2010 white-paper report titled, Creating Better readers and Writers: The Importance of Direct, Systematic Spelling and handwriting Instruction in Improving Academic performance, (p4), authors Dr. Richard Gentry and Dr. Steve Graham note that although many teachers still teach handwriting and recognize the importance of continuing it, they found that relatively few teachers felt well prepared to teach it.

They wrote:

Most teachers today understand the need for quality handwriting instruction… …About one out of every two teachers spent ten minutes or less a day teaching handwriting… Only 12% of teachers indicated that the education courses taken in college adequately prepared them to teach handwriting…

So in today’s classrooms, as many of those who currently teach young children handwriting skills retire and are replaced by others who may lack similar training or impetus; and as the handwriting-absent-common-core takes increasing hold in Michigan public schools; it is likely, that without parent and educator insistence that policymakers include handwriting standards in the public school curriculum, and that handwriting instruction courses be continued as part of university teacher preparation programs; significant improvements in the reading and writing proficiency of children in Michigan will be even more difficult to achieve.

Finally, a word about Spelling.

Included also in their White Paper report, (p.3), Gentry & Graham link spelling and phonics and handwriting to America’s historic rise to nationwide literacy.

It’s worth reading…It’s worth considering.

They wrote:

For the first two centuries of American education, spelling was the backbone of reading instruction. At a time when teachers had relatively little formal training and few tools besides a blackboard and a few standard textbooks, Americans became increasingly literate. Between 1870 and 1979, the nation’s literacy rate increased from 80 to 99.6 percent. By the 1980’s however, a trend away from direct, explicit spelling instruction began with the theory that teachers didn’t have to teach spelling directly because this knowledge would ultimately be ‘caught’ as children immersed themselves in reading and writing. There is considerable evidence that this approach failed to instill literacy in millions of children (now adults). Notably in school disticts in which teachers stopped paying attention to spelling, test scores dropped and schools began to experience failure with literacy education. For example, California led the country in 1987 in adopting a literature-based elementary curriculum. The state went so far as to ban spelling books from the required textbook list. But by 1994, California’s 4th grade proficiency scores had slid almost to the bottom of the 41 states and territories that participated in the 1994 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) test. As a result, an increasing number of parents advocate a ‘back to basics’ approach to literacy and strongly desire spelling, phonics, and handwriting instruction for their children.

…And maybe soon in Michigan, the K-12 policymakers will see it that way too.

Write On!

Henry Bothwell is a retired educator with nearly forty years experience as a teacher, principal and superintendent in Michigan K-12 Public Schools. He holds degrees in English, History, Secondary School Administration and a Doctorate in Educational Leadership. In addition to articles about Upper Peninsula history, Dr. Bothwell writes about issues facing Michigan public schools for the blog site, School Angles: A Place for Common Sense Talk About Education.