A few weeks ago I was in conversation with a candidate who had not made it into the programme of his choice. He was, understandably, very disappointed and was not very hopeful about taking a second shot at the entrance examination. Among the many reasons he gave for not wanting to make another attempt was the challenge of writing in long hand, or, in other words, having to take a pen-and-paper test.
Students who are fresh out of college or school are perhaps still very much in touch with physical stationery.
They are still used to writing in notebooks and taking examinations that call for long answers and essays running into several paragraphs if not pages. But just a few months out of college can change all that. We slip into the ease of keyboarding, composing text directly on the computer, and while we may carry around a notepad (of the paper kind) and pens, we use these to write shopping lists, quick reminders on sticky notes, just a couple of sentences at a time.
Old practices Most entrance examinations in India still require you to sit down at a desk in a large hall and write for two to three hours at a stretch. If you have been out of practice, this can be quite a challenge, as the young man found.
The muscles of your fingers and palm begin to protest after a few minutes; soon your handwriting turns into an illegible scrawl.
The paper ends up becoming as painful to read, as it was to write. And as someone who has to read several such papers, I can vouch for the fact that one becomes progressively more “challenged” when faced with a pile of scrawled answer books!
There’s no denying the fact that for many of us, the keyboard has become the writing instrument of choice. Curiously enough, the fascination with stationery has continued, with many of us willing to spend large sums on fancy pens and notebooks that we use only rarely.
Already, >Wikipedia describes “handwriting” in terms usually reserved for archaic practices: “a person's writing created with a writing utensil such as a pen or pencil. “
It’s not hard to imagine that in a few years, handwriting will become a lost or a specialised art, one that is practised by only those trained in calligraphy. The rest of us will have moved entirely to digital writing, maybe reserving the use of “writing utensils” for signatures and official forms.
For now, however, there is still a need to keep the muscles of our writing hand supple and strong, in shape to write long essays when called for.
More practical use I’m not getting into the entire debate around hand-eye-mind coordination and the value of note-taking by hand. By the time we get to our early twenties, these effects of handwriting have already been realised (or not).
It is the more practical, strategic, use of good handwriting that makes it important for us to keep this ability alive. I would argue that we need to apply ourselves much in the way we exercise our other muscles. Just as you take a daily walk, spend some time writing in a notebook.
This has to be a sustained and everyday activity if it is to serve the purpose of keeping our hands in practice. You could make this meaningful in many ways: this could turn into a daily journal entry, or an exercise in recording your observations, or simply copying something you have enjoyed reading.
The other effect of getting too used to a keyboard is that we stop paying close attention to spelling and sentence structure during the act of writing. Word processing programmes have made it easy for us to rush through unformed ideas because (for one) the spellchecker will take care of the words and (for another) we can always go back and fix it. Writing by hand forces you to think about what you are putting down a second before your pen touches the paper. The difficulty with (hand)written exams therefore is twofold: they challenge the muscles and place demands upon our thinking.
This is perhaps why some of us feel paralysed when we are asked to write something on a piece of paper — we need the touch of a keypad to make our brain work!
The daily exercise thus can work at both levels: to exercise our hands and to keep their link with the mind. So now, having typed this out on my trusty laptop, I’m going to do my daily workout… and take a walk with my fingers!
The author teaches at the University of Hyderabad and is the editor of Teacher Plus.
Email: usha.raman@gmail.com
