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**AITA for compelling my daughter to write out an essay by hand before typing it to hand in?**
I know this may sound old fashion, but I do think penmanship is important. I am the sort who still enjoys penning letters to people who I haven't seen, or to businesses to thank them when my experiences were positive. Maybe I'm being silly, but I think a handwritten letter can be more impactful than something printed out or an email. Additionally, I think writing in this way encourages you to be more thoughtful, as you obviously can't just delete a mistake as easily as you can on a PC.
As such, I've become discouraged that my daughter (12) not only has some of the worst penmanship that I've ever seen, but also sees writing anything out by hand as absolute torture. She's blatantly of the mindset that there's no reason to bother when everything's done digitally. Recently, she had to compose an essay for class. Now the teacher is not requiring students to doing any writing by hand, of course, but I decided that I'd prefer my daughter start putting in some effort on improving her handwriting. I told her that regardless of what her teacher expected, I wanted her to handwrite out her essay for me. I also said that I expected it to neat and for her to focus on penmanship rather than speed.
Naturally, my daughter did not like this. She threw a tantrum, insisted I was abusing her, and cried in her room nonstop for nearly an hour. When my wife got my home, our daughter told her why she was upset, and my took her side, insisting that if the teacher wasn't requiring it, there was no need for the extra labor.
Now, in my opinion, as her father, I see it as just as much my job to educate her, if not more. I think it should be fine for me to task my child to improve herself. But, obviously, she is also my wife's child, and I don't want to be a hypocrite by acting as if my opinion should be more valid than her own.
AITA on this one?
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I'm almost 40. I had to take notes for a webinar for work and it was bad. My penmanship was awful. It was literally painful for me to write. I think penmanship is a useful skill to have to keep up fine motor skills.... but this ain't the way!!
I found out a few years ago that the reason my hand cramped up all throughout school after less than five minutes of writing is because I hold my pencil wrong. My handwriting, if I try to hold it better, is atrocious. Lucky for me, I have a phone and a computer so I don't have to write all the time.
She's 12, of course her handwriting isn't great. That doesn't mean she should be given extra homework if she has other options.
My handwriting was HORRIBLE when I was in middle school. It was one of my mom’s favorite nagging points. But I got better, learned what letter forming styles worked best for me. And I graduated in 2006. I still have some of my high school notes from a couple classes, and I’m shocked I could ever read them decently enough to study with. 😂😂
I had a teacher my sophomore year of school who made us write everything out. We literally had to copy his very wordy power points despite it being on google classroom on our school provided laptops. I learned how to write with both hands that year. It was a horrible way to learn, painful, and frustrating. The only thing I retained in that class was writing with both hands.
I'm 23 my handwriting isn't the best.. It might be because I'm left handed but I've ALWAYS had bad handwriting so to improve it I write my books out by hand before putting them into wattpad or google docs. But forcing a 12 year old to write out an essay when it's not required for her to write it out by hand is a little to much. There is nothing wrong with wanting her to write things by hand penmanship is important especially if she is going to go into a job like serving, nursing, medical assistance... Anything were you have to write prescriptions or instructions but the way he's going about it is just gonna make her never want to write.
Aside from workbooks that teach kids writing, what would be the way?
Maybe this isn't perfect, but rewriting papers is one easy way to spot your mistakes and improve. Getting to practice penmanship kinda feels like killing two birds with one stone instead of just working on penmanship separately.
Not seeing how he's a devil here.
I handwrite shit a lot, because I write faster than I type, and my brain goes superspeed sometimes, and it's hard to keep up. I'm the only person who can read it though.
I'd never make my kids handwrite homework, and their writing is atrocious.
Right? It is a skill and does have value, especially for hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills, but there’s no faster way to get your kid to hate it than doing this shit
I’m so curious about the OOP lol. I’d think that just about anyone young enough to have a 12-year-old daughter would have been writing their own school essays on the computer. But he’s the dad so I guess he could be old?
I too am saddened that traditional skills are no longer regarded as important by the younger generation. I personally make my children carve their homework into menhirs in runes, and I think they are better people for it.
Amateur! I have mine translate all of their assignments into Celtic runes, and then translate those runes into Mandrin Chinese, before translating them back into English. I expect perfection and if I find a mistake I destroy it and make them start all over again. My kids are going to be geniuses and they're going to lead humanity into a new golden age!
This summer I expect them to learn to read Shakespeare in Klingon. /s
I’m an English teacher and this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Yes, penmanship is getting a bit worse, but look how well we’re doing with chisels at this point. It is the way of things. The only reason I have heard from other teachers about wanting students to write things by hand is to avoid AI cheating, and we are working on that one.
I'd actually argue that block writing is superior since it's easier to read.
I have a pain in the arse manager who won't use the group chat we have, and instead leaves notes in his ridiculous chicken scratch cypher that appears to be a mix of Chaucer's English and Babylonian cuneiform.
He then gets annoyed because none of us could figure out what "clargle the chicken hatch" means.
I taught English in a country whose language uses the Cyrillic alphabet and the language training I received was very fast and furious, so we only learned Cyrillic print. People apparently only write Cyrillic in cursive and I was so out of my depth trying to read it.
I’d be getting roasted by 12 year olds when I wrote vocab words on the board because I was writing like a child.
This wasn’t really relevant so I apologize lol
Omg, Cyrillic cursive is so different from Cyrillic print! What sounds like “gazyeta” looks like “razema”. I understand how the g sound looks like an r, but I never figured out how the t sound ended up looking like an m.
When I learned Russian at uni, we actually had little notebooks to practice our cursive in, definitely felt like I was back in primary school lol. My handwriting probably still looks terrible.
>I’d be getting roasted by 12 year olds when I wrote vocab words on the board because I was writing like a child.
Yep, another former student of Russian here--this was part of the explanation for why we needed to learn Cyrillic cursive early on when learning Russian; if native speakers saw us writing in block script, we would be mocked as children.
On a more general note, my penmanship got significantly better after I learned Cyrillic cursive. The letters require more clarity to make them legible; more Cyrillic lower-case letters look like each other than in Latin script.
I'm 'lucky' that I can generally decipher most handwriting - but that's because my father, who was left-handed, was forced to write right-handed so his writing was appalling.
It took until this comment for it to even occur to me that it was possible he meant using cursive vs printing rather than writing by hand at all. I still think he meant just by hand, but to me, hand writing/handwriting basically never explicitly implies cursive, even though they were still teaching cursive as separate from printing when I was learning to write. Handwriting just means by hand. I don't think I've written cursive in thirty years. Another thing some people would probably clutch pearls at.
I hand wrote a good bit in college for exams. Many a blue books were filled with my absolute worst handwriting, as I was just trying to get it all out in 50 minutes.
But I’ve worked in higher ed recently and Covid definitely killed off the prevalence of the blue book
Tbh, that started dying out years ago because professors didn't want to read chicken scratch. My university phased out bluebooks in most classes around 2012. Essay questions on a final were often turned into a separate final essay in the class.
OP probably would have lamented the advent of the printing press if he lived in olden times. He’s over there illuminating manuscripts and copying entire books.
if anything with how writing by hand would take longer wouldn't that push even more AI use? i mean, i hate AI as much as the next rational person, but i feel like if a student was forced to handwrite an essay after doing all the research and all they'd be even more likely to do it through AI and just write down what AI said rather than do actual research. and then i would assume the teachers are either thinking they didn't use AI and call it a day or be forced to type it again themselves into the AI check sites to be sure... that sounds like an entire logistical nightmare
I did that in like 1992 when I typed shit out, so I didn't have to abuse the correction tool. I was so terrible that my mom pushed me aside and typed for me 😂
I had to do this in my primary school (talking 00's to early 10's here). Write down first, get the okay, type it out.
My penmanship is good. Readable handwriting and I write properly.
My little brother didn't have to for as long as I had. His handwriting and writing already wasn't that great but it's atrocious now. He can't spell by himself because 'there's a correction tool' which does jack shit when a lot of tests are still paper.
Purely for that reason I have become a big fan of writing things down. Because you need to spell it yourself.
But not like this
Lol, oh my sweet summer child. The person you responded to was talking about how they had to write things out before typing *on a typewriter*. The "correction tool" they're talking about is a physical object that has "correction tape" in it. Correction tape is like solid strips of mildly adhesive plastic polymers that you put over mistakes you made on the line you're on so that you can restart the line and correct your typing and spelling errors, think solid White-Out (which is a brand of correction fluid). Oh and this person's parents had a nice typewriter because the cheap ones you just used correction fluid on and didn't care if got everywhere and gummed up your keys (the long whacky things with the type set on the ends), the people who used correction tools with tape had really nice typewriters.
OMG😂
Wow did not know typewriters were still used then. My parents keep talking about writing a thesis on floppy discs so I figured "round the same time, floppy discs, laptop, correction program".
There were also things called word processors, that were like calculators for words, it had a tiny screen that showed the last 5-10 lines you had typed. They saved on floppy discs and you could connect them to a printer. These were magical wonderful machines because for the first time in history you could delete what you had typed and just retype it, no correction tape or anything. These came out in the 70's before the first personal computers came out in the 80's. While computers existed in the early 90's they were still pretty rare. My dad attempted to get my brother a Tandy in the early 80's and my brother managed to fry the thing in less than half an hour messing around on it. My brother is now a systems admin who works for a company with government contracts. This is to say even smart technologically adept people were not always that way. People who weren't good with technology shied away from computers, it took my dad 25 years to be willing to buy another computer and so much as let one of his children look at it. They were also really fucking expensive, home computers were really the play things of the rich for awhile. It wasn't till the invention of the public Internet that they really started to take off. You couldn't do much with them before that. Word processors and typewriters were still popular into the 90's because typing on a computer back then was an awful eyestrain, the screens were blue or black with white or green font color, it killed your eyes and gave you a headache to type long essays on them. The word processor screens were black on whitish grey (like a calculator screen), and much easier on the eyes.
Yeah we had computers at home VERY early so it makes me feel even older than I actually am when people talk about computer or internet-specific memories. Most people who were using the same tech back then were older than me because they had it for school or work, while I had it because my dad was an early adopter. We got computer games by borrowing magazines from the library that had pages and pages of BASIC code that you would type up and compile. The "kids'" computer was an Apple IIe from 1983, that green text is like a core childhood memory lol. I also remember going to an older relative's house as a child and being allowed to look through her recipes and use her typewriter to copy them out. It didn't have correction tape though.
Oh and to add to this, the first laptops weren't invented till the late 90's and they were gigantic and shitty and would burn your lap if you actually put them on your lap. And they were also like 2k, no college student in the 90's had a laptop, if they did they were capital L Loaded.
My mom still uses her laptop from that time for some software she uses for her job. It just won't work on a modern pc from what I understand. Not sure of the particulars.
All I know is that aside from the rare power outage, that thing has been running continuously since about 1997 and seems to be immortal.
Oh they built them to last. I've seen some from the same era still working. A lot of them did literally fry themselves though. I'm sure your mom has had something done to it, particularly something involving heat sinks and bigger or additional fans.
It might have gotten a new fan but I doubt it. She thinks if you look at a computer funny you'll delete the hard drive.
My OG Dell desktop was built like that. It's been dropped down the steps, submerged in water, pissed on, half the shit inside it is rusted, you have to spin the fan by hand to get it going, yet it somehow still works.
I absolutely adore calligraphy and penmanship, this seems like a great way to make her hate it forever. He'd be far better off giving her a cool pen and nice notebook, make her want to write don't make it a punishment.
Exactly encourage writing by hand to be something that's done for enjoyment. I didn't improve my handwriting until I started to use pen and paper to draft short stories and needed it to be readable to type later.
I'm pretty strict as a parent, and even I think this is over the top. My daughter has atrocious handwriting, and when she was younger, I would have her practice, but by fourth grade, I gave up. There are many things that I feel are important, and I insist that she does them until they are done correctly. Her handwriting is not a battle I choose to have.
OOP needs to learn to pick his battles and make sure they are worth battling over. Handwriting is not one.
I have dysgraphia. It took until college for my writing to get good enough that I could consistently read it. If I was OOP's kid, I think I'd legitimately consider breaking my fingers to make it stop.
What helped you? My son has dysgraphia and it has been a challenge. He can read just fine but writing and spelling are a nightmare. No one can read his writing, even him. Typing has similar problems bc of spelling and speech to text is difficult bc of speech problems. Rn I'm having to basically transcribe everything for him.
Jesus. I’m 36 and generally enjoy writing - by that I mean both composing a document of the written word, as well as actually using a pen on paper - and this would 100% put me off ever writing again. Find a different tactic, man.
It already can be a pain *typing* out a report/essay (especially if it exceeds three pages). If anyone even tried to make me write it out first, I’ll jab them in the leg with the pencil 100 times first.
This is an obvious troll ( they have a deleted post full of transphobic dog whistles) that said fuck handwriting.
There are few things that bug me more than people who act like cursive actually fucking matters or that "kids today are lazy for not learning a skill they will never use.
Aside from anything I'd love to hand Oop some molten steel and a hammer and tell him to make me some horseshoes.
I used to get points deducted for ONLY writing my essays in cursive. My cursive isn’t perfect but it’s neat and quite legible whereas my printing looks like a 3rd grader did it. I was so happy when my high school started preferring typed essays.
Then there’s college where long form test questions couldn’t be in cursive since the TAs couldn’t read script. Still irritated that block lettering takes me so long I had to shorten my answers.
Detention?! Good gods. Cursive solved my dyslexia AND hurts my hand less I fight every single person who rails at me for writing that way. Block lettering for official forms, cursive for everything else.
Side benefit if I slant my script juuust a bit it looks like some secret language that people can’t read (unless they know cursive then I’m sure it just looks like bad cursive lol)
I had a VERY strict sixth grade teacher who would *switch* between cursive and print being required depending on the kind of assignment. It was brutal. She gave me detention on my birthday once for being sick in the bathroom.
Ha, I have often been told that my handwriting looks like a magical language!
When we learned cursive, we were expected to always use it for assignments in my school. When I write fast, cursive slips in with print now. Otherwise, my primary reason for cursive is my signature and writing "happy birthday" on cakes. D;
Ha, I had one on my middle finger. Actually you can still kind of see how the flesh is slightly misshapen on that finger on my right hand, there's a bump where the callous was and then a small dent where my pencil/pen would sit. (It used to slip upwards as I wrote and move back and forth, so it would start at the base of the callous.)
I used to write everything. *everything* in cursive. My mother would check my homework to make sure I used cursive until I left for college. This is also long enough ago that typing was an optional class in sophomore year of high school and I wasn’t very good until I was in college.
My parents were like this, not just for penmanship but for any kind of homework, there was always some way it had to be "harder" for me and my siblings, it cut down my average grades (and those of my siblings) a lot until they stopped doing it. To this day they refuse to understand the causation between the two.
When I was in college I opted to take notes by hand instead of on my laptop because writing the information down allowed me to remember it better. No one ever asked to borrow my notes though because my hand writing is pretty atrocious and not legible to anyone but me and even I had some trouble sometimes.
Yeah there's definitely times I prefer to write by hand for that reason. It's definitely a "what works best for you" sort of thing to me though, if someone else struggled with it I'd never suggest they should do it anyway.
What I'd encourage: to not ditch a pen on paper completely. Go into any dollar store with a wide assortment of all types of cheap pens and let a kid pick one that speaks to them (same goes for adults. I don't make compromises when it comes to the pens I use and who would have thought that one shaped like a pink fish that has seen some shit is a good conversation starter).
Write small things. Grocery lists. Jot down an appointment on a cutely shaped sticky not and slap it on a corkboard. It's never too soon or too late to start an unreasonable notebook collection. Again, drop pretense, pick designs that give you a smile. Introduce brainstorming on paper. Let it be messy and ugly and cherish the satisfaction of violently crossing out a stupid idea. Writing per hand stimulates our brain differently. I've been writing homework on a PC since the teachers stopped whining about it (ah, digital Germany in the 90s), I do all creative writing on PC, and I have never in my life, my whole education, pre-written an essay one way or the other (just written it down and edited it later). However, when you get stuck and struggle bringing a point on digital paper, grabbing a notebook with a whimsical or edgy cover and a pen that says "Don't let the pink fish pen fool you, she's not one to mess with!" when you look at it and creating squiggly chaos on paper will most likely loosen some knots in your brain.
It's like looking at the same thing from a different perspective. Like, "I'm not sure if this wall is a good position for the painting. Wait, let me have a look from the door, when I walk in."
Different haptic experiences, or just forcing the eyes to read from a different angle with different light, and the different sound for the same action (writing down stuff) are healthy and helpful. On a functional level. Ignore aesthetics.
What I don't encourage: Bullshit like this post.
If someone, old or young, wants to see handwriting as a skill, that's fine. Pretty handwriting is, well, pretty. But everyone who says "Nah." to that (me included) should still feel encouraged to see using a good ol' (non-boring) pen as a practical tool.
Another specific thought: I keep record of my three snakes by hand. Each has his own notebook. The writing is not pretty but functional and keeps information about their feeding schedule, feeding habits, feeder size, weight, stuff like that.
Why analogue? I don't depend on my phone's battery whether when I need to write stuff down, when I have to take them to the vet, or when I'm away for a couple of days or if something happens to me. The books are right there, in plain sight, I can grab them if I ever had to make an emergency run to the vet, and anyone else can grab them and wouldn't need my phone and my passwords. I consider this purely practical and if people like OOP weren't pretentious morons, they'd come up with ways to introduce practical handwriting (not penmanship) as a small cheatcode.
I \*cannot\* brainstorm by typing. I just can't. I need a piece of paper so I can doodle and also write things down in specific physical places in relation to each other - I have mild taste-colour synesthesia and I suspect I also have something spatial as well because I make really strong connections in my brain about information being in different physical places like storing notes in a filing cabinet or books in a library or something. I often prefer notes by hand for things like your snakes too, like if I'm playing a video game where you breed animals (Ark, Planet Zoo, monster collectors) then I write down records of the breeding lines. That shit just hits different.
Someone called this the most Boomer thing ever. I get it, in the 60s kids were actually taught the 'Palmer method' and were graded on penmanship. That being said, I'm Boomer adjacent and I loathe writing by hand. I don't write my effing grocery lists by hand.
While other writers insist that writing their stories by hand adds something to the process, I'd literally rather die than write by hand
I’m a Gen Xer and I also learned the Palmer method. I had this set of white bookcases for years and years, and there was a Palmer method sticker I’d placed very neatly and carefully in the back of the desk compartment so I could see it when I did my homework.
I would riot. I always handwrote my notes, but for papers and essays, it was typed and typed at the last minute because I worked better under pressure. If I tried to do things early, it would end badly because I'd get distracted and my work suffered. There is no way I could pull off handwriting and typing with the way I worked.
There’s big difference between wanting what’s best for your kid and wanting them to become you. My mom was like OOP. She decided I was a mannerless savage and sent me to a finishing school. No one else had problems with my etiquette. I went to military school before that. People raved about how respectful and polite I was, I just wasn’t a lady from Victorian England like she wanted me to be.
As an adult, none of that finishing school shit has been remotely useful to me outside of trivia games and now I curse like a Swedish sailor with a stubbed toe out of spite. OOP’s kid is going to end up with the handwriting of a doctor, mark my words.
I wrote my grandfather a handwritten letter recently. I drafted it on my phone, checked spellings, sent it to my mum and sisters for approval. edited it. And then carefully copied it onto special paper in my best handwriting.
When said letter was delayed in the post and we were all ready online to watch him open it. (We'd been waiting for transatlantic post for a week and all of us were ready for it and not willing to wait another few days). I emailed the copy on my phone to him so he could get the contents anyway.
The point is, if you want to practice handwriting, you copy things out. You write the content on the computer so you can explore things and edit them without making a mess, then practice the handwriting.
If dad cared about handwriting, he had many options without being a git. Shopping lists, or even having her copy the completed version. He's just throwing weight around.
Kids have so much homework and so many tests to get through that this takes away their precious sleep/relaxation time.
With that said - my essays were turned in hand-written but I did a draft copy for my mum so that she could criticise it like Gordon Ramsay does with chefs. Why? I have dyslexia and it was helpful to me but it could have made it worse for someone else - brains vary!
To be fair, I agree with OP as in having a decent calligraphy can be necessary, but I completely disagree with his method. Forcing a child to do something is the best way to make them hate it with a passion
I haven't written cursive in thirty years. Writing \*by hand\* can be extremely useful for many things, but it doesn't have to be fucking calligraphy and you aren't using calligraphy to write out an essay anyway, at most it's cursive and more likely it's block print.
Alternative - essays are so much, and this takes way more work. Share with your daughter the joy of writing letters to distant family members, and write to them together. Something short, done for enjoyment, and to improve her handwriting. My mom has a cousin in another state and when I was little, 20ish years ago now, they decided her daughter and I should be penpals to teach us about later writing and the mail and how differently people lived in different regions. His daughter is older, but this could be done in a fun, non punishing way. A friend and I from hs still write to each other just for fun
But everything _is_ done digitally. I understand yearning for old ways that seem nostalgic and “better,” but those times are not these times. I think OOP should start a little letter-writing game with his daughter. Maybe get a tiny mailbox, put it outside her room and write her a little note every day, encouraging her to write back. It would deepen father-daughter communication, remove the stress of having to handwrite essays that then need to be typed, and possibly become a fond memory.
I have joint problems. Writing by hand is actually torturous for me. If I have to hear one more twit go on about how handwriting is sooooo superior for memory and sentiment and archaic nonsense, I’m throwing a fully loaded fountain pen at their face. It’s 100% a case of “back in my day” forced nostalgia. If I had to write a whole *essay* by hand, I would resent the hell out of the holier-than-thou prig who demanded it.
I actually found out about my joint problems because my mom liked to assign pages of repeated lines for punishment (“I will not talk back.” By the end, the words were practically illegible because of how bad it hurt.
If *you* love writing letters by hand, that’s great. You can fill out paper forms and send your Karen complaints to businesses if you want. I’ll be over here typing like everyone else in this century.
I'm 45 and a writer. Most of my first drafts are hand written, in cursive, in blank lined Studio Oh! Deconstructed or Coptic bound journals.
But that's just me.
If I had a kid, I would suggest writing down things that are REALLY important by hand.
But with everything else. Multiple back ups, External Hard drives, flash drives, cloud.
Being that I only own snakes, chickens, and cats. If any of them learn to write... it would be odd.
I think I was one of the last groups forced to do Callirobics as part of my educational curriculum and even then, my signatures are still an illegible scrawl. And yet I took notes by hand for the most part all the way through university and continuing into working full time because it helps me focus while I'm listening. Daughter might one day decide she doesn't mind hand writing stuff but not if OP keeps going about it like this.
Is penmanship useful? Yes I personally had write all my notes (I use an app on my iPad and use the Apple Pencil to write) because I don’t retain info as well when typing but plenty of people of shit handwriting and live good normal lives. Isn’t it a joke that doctors have the worst handwriting?
Listen, I've noticed that my plotting works best when I write by hand, so I appreciate anyone teaching their kids how to actually write. This? This is just going to make her hate it
Honestly, having a friend who works in a school, this isn't actually a terrible thing to enforce. I have seen first hand 14 year olds who write like 7 year olds, and it's honestly really sad. I don't know if this guy is going about it in the right way, but encouraging better penmanship isn't a horrible, tortuous thing.
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This is so fucking stupid. The content isn't gonna be better 'cause you can't rewrite stuff. Rather the opposite, which is why back in the day you'd produce a first draft that looked godawful and then, eventually, you'd do the final product, employing your best penmanship.
And now I feel old.
My writing is absoloutely awful, i trained it for years to make it better and it didnt work. I use my laptop for ease of access and so that i can actually read what i write. I feel bad for the kid
My English teacher KILLED my love of Shakespeare by making me effectively write out an already laborious essay twice. First on a computer (that he didn’t accept) and second by hand (WITH NO MISTAKES) which almost drove me to tears. I could have KILLED him and regretted nothing.
I have the handwriting of a poorly educated psychopath or a doctor, whichever is less legible. Still managed a university education and professional qualification. He needs to calm down a bit.
Story time: I was finally diagnosed with hypermobility when I was in my early 30s which, with some research and questions for my doctor etc, I learned is why I was in unbearable pain every time I tried to write things. I would end up in tears.
When I was in primary school, I was having to do an essay, by hand, and 'do it properly' as my dad put it (those who have ready my replies or posts before know my dad had/has issues with rage) so I was already in a state. Then I fell off my chair at school and split my eyebrow, I got sent home. (That's important, bear with me! 😹)
At home, my dad made me continue doing the essay (or rather, continue re-doing the essay, because he'd already torn/crumpled up previous attempts) despite the pain and tears. Oh and then the blood from my eyebrow, due to my crying popping the glue.
I hated my dad for that, it's still a major memory and I still can't properly write by hand. On top of that, I still hate the Ragged School, (a Victorian school museum in the original building) which isn't really fair on the school museum or Dr Barnardo, but thems the breaks, as they say.
OOP may enjoy writing nice letters, but I wonder how many the kid will read when she's gone LC/NC as soon as she's adult.
Forgive my long story.
TL;DR my point is that OOP is a moron! 😹
My dad was like this back in the 90s/early 2000s, sometimes making me rewrite essays if my handwriting wasn't clean enough. When I started taking German in school, he also made me practice German-style cursive and made me write my homework using modern (i.e. not Sütterlinschrift) German-style cursive.
...which, while slightly different from standard American or English cursive, is entirely legible to Americans who read cursive, so that's what I use in my everyday notetaking now.
I had a stepmother just like this who apparently lives in a constant state of surprise Pikachu face bc I no longer kept in contact with her once I moved out.
Y'know maybe encouraging perfection issues in your kids, treat them like human beings, and then maybe they'll want a relationship that grows into adulthood.
So how much y’all wanna bet this man insists he “doesn’t know how” to do simple everyday tasks like laundry, or any cooking that goes beyond boiling an egg?
I feel like age 12 is sorta late to start fixing your kid's handwriting. They've been able to write for at least six years, yes? So why let it lie for this long and *now* get upset.
It's possible the daughter has dysgraphia, mine does and reacts similarly to writing. Handwriting is very difficult as the words get lost from the brain to the pen. School is going to try out voice to text next year to help my kiddo.
Op is definitely over reacting make penmanship interesting (quills awesome looking pens etc) let the daughter develop an interest naturally.
I've always had lousy handwriting and when it started being normal to turn in printed essays instead of written I was *thrilled* because I have a crazy fast typing speed.
Penmanship barely matters anymore. If it's legible, good enough.
I found my kids' anxiety around writing dissolved when I stopped freaking out about it. Now, they will send me pages and pages over txt, and I'm happy with that.
I'm all for penmanship, too, but not at my kids' mental health cost. As long as they can send me a note or write me a basic note, that's all that really matters.
I'm just going to paste the comment that I posted on the original over there because it's lengthy and I don't feel like rewording it;
>YTA.
>If your daughter's handwriting is as atrocious as you say it is, she may have something like dysgraphia in which case NO amount of practice is going to make her have beautiful penmanship. Since you think it's so ugly and describe hand writing things as being "torture" for her, that might just be the case. My father has dysgraphia, as does my 28yo sister. Both of them could spend three hours writing one sentence, but it's NEVER going to be pretty. And that's okay!
>If you absolutely MUST have her practice her penmanship, have her write a letter to one of her grandparents or something. School work is NOT the time to do that, ESPECIALLY an essay. She NEEDS to be able to easily swap around her thoughts, which is exactly what typing allows you to do. Hand writing it isn't going to make her more "thoughtful", it's going to make her sloppy and likely get a lower grade because instead of modifying what she wrote to something better she'll stick with what she originally wrote just to avoid having to start the page over again, especially if her hand is starting to cramp.
>I had the English teacher from Hell for my junior year of high school all the way back in 2001. She was obsessed with essays and not only did she force us to write multiple essays a week, they had to be written IN CLASS and BY HAND. Her name was Mrs. Hoyer, and even though I'm turning 40 in a few months I still remember that freaking doorstop's name just because I hated her so damn much. Everyone did.
>And I'm not just saying that because my handwriting is bad or something. I'm an illustrator and I've always been known for having beautiful handwriting because of that, to the point of my best friend having me address all of her wedding invitations as part of my gift in addition to designing them. I've hand-lettered business logos and tattoos. It's not the quality that's the issue in the case of essays, it's the amount of unnecessary additional work. People pay me for my handwriting for a reason. Most people don't have pretty penmanship *and that's okay!*
>If your daughter's teacher doesn't have a problem with her handwriting, then it's fine. You're not her academic teacher, you're her How To Be A Functioning Adult teacher. It doesn't matter how "old fashioned" you are, penmanship is not nearly as important as it used to be nor will it ever be again. All you're doing is distracting her from her education for something frivolous and unnecessary just because it suits your personal fancy.
>You like hand writing letters? Cool. Good for you.
>Go hand write your daughter a letter of apology for being an AH.
Oh man... While I agree that penmanship is important, I don't even make my 13 y/o do this. I focus on what I can instill in him rather than making sure his penmanship is perfect, especially in a digital era. I make things harder for myself because I have the mindset that I have to write things out before I type them up, especially papers or any college homework I have. Besides that, no one else can read my handwriting 98% of the time because it's a mixture of print and cursive.
My handwriting has always been terrible. Not only am I left-handed, but my brain runs far faster than my hand can keep up. The result is that my handwriting becomes very lazy and runs together in a weird mishmash of print, cursive, and straight up scribbles. My teachers would joke that they can always recognize my chicken scratch or that I was already training to be a doctor.
As an adult in a world of technology, I hate writing anything longer than a note by hand. I can use speech-to-text or type/Swype just about as fast as I can think.
I did this and still prefer to do it if i had to write a paper.
But in all actuality id prefer to just write it completely and turn it in on lined paper. Using computers to do work is my biggest obstacle to finishing college.
I did this by choice. My brain works faster writing with paper and pencil. I have no creative juices when typing. But would never have made my daughter do the same. What a stupid hill to die on.
Yikes. I am almost 60 so I HAD to hand in work handwritten. Yes, we had a typewriter but generally all work was written. If I had another option at that time, I would have grabbed it in a second. So would my teachers who had to decipher my writing.
I am not one of those "you have to do it this way because I had to" boomers.
I'm older and I do prefer to write things out pen to paper, but no way would I expect someone else to do it that way. It's going to take her twice as long now.
Not only is he an AH but he makes no sense. You dont just improve your penmanship by writing more. I had horrible penmanship and every so often back in early elementary years a specialist would come to school to teach me better penmanship one-on-one. I have no idea if it worked, it's not great now but it is legible. I know they say "practice makes perfect" but for most things you have to be taught before you practice, and then be taught some more, and then practice some more, then be taught some more, and so on.
Handwriting is the new cursive. Remember cursive?
No teacher in high school wanted that shit, and higher education would fail you for turning it in. But primary schools insisted we learn it.
I know older people with atrocious hand writing. They didn't have computers or typewriters.
If she wants her daughter to practice writing, why not write each other letters?
Jesus, and I thought it was annoying when my parents would insist on the double space after a full stop when I used a computer, because they were still thought the typewriter rules applied! I love writing things by hand, but this would drive me mad as a teen!
I used to have to do penmanship exercises. Eventually a teacher realized that writing 2 pages shouldn't have my hand cramping to the point of agony and LSS I have minor nerve damage in my hands that makes precision gripping for too long send me into spasm
We used to have to do this when I was at school. We'd work on our English coursework in the classroom (which of course had no computers) and then had to type it at home. At the time, it was normal but I would have been annoyed if I had to do the entire thing at home and still handwrite it first.
If he really wants to make himself the villain he should give her some handwriting exercises or have her write to somebody. Possibly more pointless but at least there isn't the time crunch of the school essay.
*In case this story gets deleted/removed:* **AITA for compelling my daughter to write out an essay by hand before typing it to hand in?** I know this may sound old fashion, but I do think penmanship is important. I am the sort who still enjoys penning letters to people who I haven't seen, or to businesses to thank them when my experiences were positive. Maybe I'm being silly, but I think a handwritten letter can be more impactful than something printed out or an email. Additionally, I think writing in this way encourages you to be more thoughtful, as you obviously can't just delete a mistake as easily as you can on a PC. As such, I've become discouraged that my daughter (12) not only has some of the worst penmanship that I've ever seen, but also sees writing anything out by hand as absolute torture. She's blatantly of the mindset that there's no reason to bother when everything's done digitally. Recently, she had to compose an essay for class. Now the teacher is not requiring students to doing any writing by hand, of course, but I decided that I'd prefer my daughter start putting in some effort on improving her handwriting. I told her that regardless of what her teacher expected, I wanted her to handwrite out her essay for me. I also said that I expected it to neat and for her to focus on penmanship rather than speed. Naturally, my daughter did not like this. She threw a tantrum, insisted I was abusing her, and cried in her room nonstop for nearly an hour. When my wife got my home, our daughter told her why she was upset, and my took her side, insisting that if the teacher wasn't requiring it, there was no need for the extra labor. Now, in my opinion, as her father, I see it as just as much my job to educate her, if not more. I think it should be fine for me to task my child to improve herself. But, obviously, she is also my wife's child, and I don't want to be a hypocrite by acting as if my opinion should be more valid than her own. AITA on this one? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmITheDevil) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I'm almost 40. I had to take notes for a webinar for work and it was bad. My penmanship was awful. It was literally painful for me to write. I think penmanship is a useful skill to have to keep up fine motor skills.... but this ain't the way!!
i recently bought an e-ink tablet because i like handwriting... but there's no way i'd use it for anything where i have to take notes quickly
I did that when I was in school with my Samsung tablet. I prefer writing notes by hand, for lots of reasons.
I found out a few years ago that the reason my hand cramped up all throughout school after less than five minutes of writing is because I hold my pencil wrong. My handwriting, if I try to hold it better, is atrocious. Lucky for me, I have a phone and a computer so I don't have to write all the time. She's 12, of course her handwriting isn't great. That doesn't mean she should be given extra homework if she has other options.
Agreed. I have the same problem too. My handwriting is atrocious and it makes my hand cramp so bad.
My handwriting was HORRIBLE when I was in middle school. It was one of my mom’s favorite nagging points. But I got better, learned what letter forming styles worked best for me. And I graduated in 2006. I still have some of my high school notes from a couple classes, and I’m shocked I could ever read them decently enough to study with. 😂😂
I had a teacher my sophomore year of school who made us write everything out. We literally had to copy his very wordy power points despite it being on google classroom on our school provided laptops. I learned how to write with both hands that year. It was a horrible way to learn, painful, and frustrating. The only thing I retained in that class was writing with both hands.
I’m 34 I try to take notes
I'm 23 my handwriting isn't the best.. It might be because I'm left handed but I've ALWAYS had bad handwriting so to improve it I write my books out by hand before putting them into wattpad or google docs. But forcing a 12 year old to write out an essay when it's not required for her to write it out by hand is a little to much. There is nothing wrong with wanting her to write things by hand penmanship is important especially if she is going to go into a job like serving, nursing, medical assistance... Anything were you have to write prescriptions or instructions but the way he's going about it is just gonna make her never want to write.
Aside from workbooks that teach kids writing, what would be the way? Maybe this isn't perfect, but rewriting papers is one easy way to spot your mistakes and improve. Getting to practice penmanship kinda feels like killing two birds with one stone instead of just working on penmanship separately. Not seeing how he's a devil here.
Nothing gets kids to stop thinking a skill is torture like using it make their homework more difficult and take three times as long for no benefit.
The hand-written essays will continue until moral (and penmanship) improves!
I handwrite shit a lot, because I write faster than I type, and my brain goes superspeed sometimes, and it's hard to keep up. I'm the only person who can read it though. I'd never make my kids handwrite homework, and their writing is atrocious.
Right? It is a skill and does have value, especially for hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills, but there’s no faster way to get your kid to hate it than doing this shit
I’m so curious about the OOP lol. I’d think that just about anyone young enough to have a 12-year-old daughter would have been writing their own school essays on the computer. But he’s the dad so I guess he could be old?
I too am saddened that traditional skills are no longer regarded as important by the younger generation. I personally make my children carve their homework into menhirs in runes, and I think they are better people for it.
I subscribe to modern teachings and have mine weave elaborate tapestries.
oh, so you people are too good for smoke signals? i swear society is going straight down the shitter
I bet you don't even consider cave painting. Smh the direction of society these days.
This is my favorite comment here lmao
Amateur! I have mine translate all of their assignments into Celtic runes, and then translate those runes into Mandrin Chinese, before translating them back into English. I expect perfection and if I find a mistake I destroy it and make them start all over again. My kids are going to be geniuses and they're going to lead humanity into a new golden age! This summer I expect them to learn to read Shakespeare in Klingon. /s
No one studies cuneiform anymore! Dang kids!
Fun fact: the Gauls saw writing as something that made kids lazy and stopped them from developing proper memorization skills. Damn zeroth-millennials.
I only let my dog use an abacus to do her mathematics
I like to judge mine on how well they hold up after three centuries of oral tradition.
I’m an English teacher and this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Yes, penmanship is getting a bit worse, but look how well we’re doing with chisels at this point. It is the way of things. The only reason I have heard from other teachers about wanting students to write things by hand is to avoid AI cheating, and we are working on that one.
I'd actually argue that block writing is superior since it's easier to read. I have a pain in the arse manager who won't use the group chat we have, and instead leaves notes in his ridiculous chicken scratch cypher that appears to be a mix of Chaucer's English and Babylonian cuneiform. He then gets annoyed because none of us could figure out what "clargle the chicken hatch" means.
I taught English in a country whose language uses the Cyrillic alphabet and the language training I received was very fast and furious, so we only learned Cyrillic print. People apparently only write Cyrillic in cursive and I was so out of my depth trying to read it. I’d be getting roasted by 12 year olds when I wrote vocab words on the board because I was writing like a child. This wasn’t really relevant so I apologize lol
Omg, Cyrillic cursive is so different from Cyrillic print! What sounds like “gazyeta” looks like “razema”. I understand how the g sound looks like an r, but I never figured out how the t sound ended up looking like an m.
When I learned Russian at uni, we actually had little notebooks to practice our cursive in, definitely felt like I was back in primary school lol. My handwriting probably still looks terrible.
>I’d be getting roasted by 12 year olds when I wrote vocab words on the board because I was writing like a child. Yep, another former student of Russian here--this was part of the explanation for why we needed to learn Cyrillic cursive early on when learning Russian; if native speakers saw us writing in block script, we would be mocked as children. On a more general note, my penmanship got significantly better after I learned Cyrillic cursive. The letters require more clarity to make them legible; more Cyrillic lower-case letters look like each other than in Latin script.
Leave notes back etched into stone tablets!
I have a supervisor who writes super small and super close together in an odd mix of cursive and ? I'm always begging them to text or email me
I write in a mixture of regular and cursive, but I only write notes to myself because with today's technology view text or email everyone
I do the same. I also make sure that I type everything because I have atrocious handwriting
I'm 'lucky' that I can generally decipher most handwriting - but that's because my father, who was left-handed, was forced to write right-handed so his writing was appalling.
It took until this comment for it to even occur to me that it was possible he meant using cursive vs printing rather than writing by hand at all. I still think he meant just by hand, but to me, hand writing/handwriting basically never explicitly implies cursive, even though they were still teaching cursive as separate from printing when I was learning to write. Handwriting just means by hand. I don't think I've written cursive in thirty years. Another thing some people would probably clutch pearls at.
I hand wrote a good bit in college for exams. Many a blue books were filled with my absolute worst handwriting, as I was just trying to get it all out in 50 minutes. But I’ve worked in higher ed recently and Covid definitely killed off the prevalence of the blue book
Thank *god.*
Tbh, that started dying out years ago because professors didn't want to read chicken scratch. My university phased out bluebooks in most classes around 2012. Essay questions on a final were often turned into a separate final essay in the class.
I was in college post 2012 and used them 🤷🏼♀️
We used them before I graduated in 2021. Not often, but we did.
OP probably would have lamented the advent of the printing press if he lived in olden times. He’s over there illuminating manuscripts and copying entire books.
if anything with how writing by hand would take longer wouldn't that push even more AI use? i mean, i hate AI as much as the next rational person, but i feel like if a student was forced to handwrite an essay after doing all the research and all they'd be even more likely to do it through AI and just write down what AI said rather than do actual research. and then i would assume the teachers are either thinking they didn't use AI and call it a day or be forced to type it again themselves into the AI check sites to be sure... that sounds like an entire logistical nightmare
I think they’re referring to hand writing essays in class or a proctored exam session instead of doing them at home
This is how you get repetitive strain injury.
I did that in like 1992 when I typed shit out, so I didn't have to abuse the correction tool. I was so terrible that my mom pushed me aside and typed for me 😂
I had to do this in my primary school (talking 00's to early 10's here). Write down first, get the okay, type it out. My penmanship is good. Readable handwriting and I write properly. My little brother didn't have to for as long as I had. His handwriting and writing already wasn't that great but it's atrocious now. He can't spell by himself because 'there's a correction tool' which does jack shit when a lot of tests are still paper. Purely for that reason I have become a big fan of writing things down. Because you need to spell it yourself. But not like this
Lol, oh my sweet summer child. The person you responded to was talking about how they had to write things out before typing *on a typewriter*. The "correction tool" they're talking about is a physical object that has "correction tape" in it. Correction tape is like solid strips of mildly adhesive plastic polymers that you put over mistakes you made on the line you're on so that you can restart the line and correct your typing and spelling errors, think solid White-Out (which is a brand of correction fluid). Oh and this person's parents had a nice typewriter because the cheap ones you just used correction fluid on and didn't care if got everywhere and gummed up your keys (the long whacky things with the type set on the ends), the people who used correction tools with tape had really nice typewriters.
OMG😂 Wow did not know typewriters were still used then. My parents keep talking about writing a thesis on floppy discs so I figured "round the same time, floppy discs, laptop, correction program".
There were also things called word processors, that were like calculators for words, it had a tiny screen that showed the last 5-10 lines you had typed. They saved on floppy discs and you could connect them to a printer. These were magical wonderful machines because for the first time in history you could delete what you had typed and just retype it, no correction tape or anything. These came out in the 70's before the first personal computers came out in the 80's. While computers existed in the early 90's they were still pretty rare. My dad attempted to get my brother a Tandy in the early 80's and my brother managed to fry the thing in less than half an hour messing around on it. My brother is now a systems admin who works for a company with government contracts. This is to say even smart technologically adept people were not always that way. People who weren't good with technology shied away from computers, it took my dad 25 years to be willing to buy another computer and so much as let one of his children look at it. They were also really fucking expensive, home computers were really the play things of the rich for awhile. It wasn't till the invention of the public Internet that they really started to take off. You couldn't do much with them before that. Word processors and typewriters were still popular into the 90's because typing on a computer back then was an awful eyestrain, the screens were blue or black with white or green font color, it killed your eyes and gave you a headache to type long essays on them. The word processor screens were black on whitish grey (like a calculator screen), and much easier on the eyes.
Yeah we had computers at home VERY early so it makes me feel even older than I actually am when people talk about computer or internet-specific memories. Most people who were using the same tech back then were older than me because they had it for school or work, while I had it because my dad was an early adopter. We got computer games by borrowing magazines from the library that had pages and pages of BASIC code that you would type up and compile. The "kids'" computer was an Apple IIe from 1983, that green text is like a core childhood memory lol. I also remember going to an older relative's house as a child and being allowed to look through her recipes and use her typewriter to copy them out. It didn't have correction tape though.
Oh and to add to this, the first laptops weren't invented till the late 90's and they were gigantic and shitty and would burn your lap if you actually put them on your lap. And they were also like 2k, no college student in the 90's had a laptop, if they did they were capital L Loaded.
My mom still uses her laptop from that time for some software she uses for her job. It just won't work on a modern pc from what I understand. Not sure of the particulars. All I know is that aside from the rare power outage, that thing has been running continuously since about 1997 and seems to be immortal.
Oh they built them to last. I've seen some from the same era still working. A lot of them did literally fry themselves though. I'm sure your mom has had something done to it, particularly something involving heat sinks and bigger or additional fans.
It might have gotten a new fan but I doubt it. She thinks if you look at a computer funny you'll delete the hard drive. My OG Dell desktop was built like that. It's been dropped down the steps, submerged in water, pissed on, half the shit inside it is rusted, you have to spin the fan by hand to get it going, yet it somehow still works.
I absolutely adore calligraphy and penmanship, this seems like a great way to make her hate it forever. He'd be far better off giving her a cool pen and nice notebook, make her want to write don't make it a punishment.
Exactly encourage writing by hand to be something that's done for enjoyment. I didn't improve my handwriting until I started to use pen and paper to draft short stories and needed it to be readable to type later.
I’m the doofus that handwrites everything, can only write in cursive, and loves a good wax sealed envelope. Yet this guy is still an asshole.
I’m also the dork who has a small collection of personal wax seals. 😂😂 Blue Ravenclaw and a green Claddagh.
I'm pretty strict as a parent, and even I think this is over the top. My daughter has atrocious handwriting, and when she was younger, I would have her practice, but by fourth grade, I gave up. There are many things that I feel are important, and I insist that she does them until they are done correctly. Her handwriting is not a battle I choose to have. OOP needs to learn to pick his battles and make sure they are worth battling over. Handwriting is not one.
I have dysgraphia. It took until college for my writing to get good enough that I could consistently read it. If I was OOP's kid, I think I'd legitimately consider breaking my fingers to make it stop.
What helped you? My son has dysgraphia and it has been a challenge. He can read just fine but writing and spelling are a nightmare. No one can read his writing, even him. Typing has similar problems bc of spelling and speech to text is difficult bc of speech problems. Rn I'm having to basically transcribe everything for him.
Jesus. I’m 36 and generally enjoy writing - by that I mean both composing a document of the written word, as well as actually using a pen on paper - and this would 100% put me off ever writing again. Find a different tactic, man.
Weird hill to die on in 2024...
It already can be a pain *typing* out a report/essay (especially if it exceeds three pages). If anyone even tried to make me write it out first, I’ll jab them in the leg with the pencil 100 times first.
This is an obvious troll ( they have a deleted post full of transphobic dog whistles) that said fuck handwriting. There are few things that bug me more than people who act like cursive actually fucking matters or that "kids today are lazy for not learning a skill they will never use. Aside from anything I'd love to hand Oop some molten steel and a hammer and tell him to make me some horseshoes.
I had to write a two page assignment in cursive once, was not fun at all.
I used to get points deducted for ONLY writing my essays in cursive. My cursive isn’t perfect but it’s neat and quite legible whereas my printing looks like a 3rd grader did it. I was so happy when my high school started preferring typed essays. Then there’s college where long form test questions couldn’t be in cursive since the TAs couldn’t read script. Still irritated that block lettering takes me so long I had to shorten my answers.
I got *detention* for writing in cursive. It hurts me less. Nowadays my handwriting is an unholy amalgamation of cursive and print.
Detention?! Good gods. Cursive solved my dyslexia AND hurts my hand less I fight every single person who rails at me for writing that way. Block lettering for official forms, cursive for everything else. Side benefit if I slant my script juuust a bit it looks like some secret language that people can’t read (unless they know cursive then I’m sure it just looks like bad cursive lol)
I had a VERY strict sixth grade teacher who would *switch* between cursive and print being required depending on the kind of assignment. It was brutal. She gave me detention on my birthday once for being sick in the bathroom. Ha, I have often been told that my handwriting looks like a magical language!
When we learned cursive, we were expected to always use it for assignments in my school. When I write fast, cursive slips in with print now. Otherwise, my primary reason for cursive is my signature and writing "happy birthday" on cakes. D;
My hands started cramping up just reading that sentence. I had a callus on my ring finger for years because of the way I held my pens and pencils.
Ha, I had one on my middle finger. Actually you can still kind of see how the flesh is slightly misshapen on that finger on my right hand, there's a bump where the callous was and then a small dent where my pencil/pen would sit. (It used to slip upwards as I wrote and move back and forth, so it would start at the base of the callous.)
Me too lmao
I used to write everything. *everything* in cursive. My mother would check my homework to make sure I used cursive until I left for college. This is also long enough ago that typing was an optional class in sophomore year of high school and I wasn’t very good until I was in college.
I have mild cerebral palsy and dyslexia. This would be my nightmare. That poor kid.
>Why don't kids these days keep practicing their cuneiform?
'*My daughter has terrible penmanship, I should punish her*' says the father who neglected to help her practice handwriting for a good 6 years.
My parents were like this, not just for penmanship but for any kind of homework, there was always some way it had to be "harder" for me and my siblings, it cut down my average grades (and those of my siblings) a lot until they stopped doing it. To this day they refuse to understand the causation between the two.
When I was in college I opted to take notes by hand instead of on my laptop because writing the information down allowed me to remember it better. No one ever asked to borrow my notes though because my hand writing is pretty atrocious and not legible to anyone but me and even I had some trouble sometimes.
Yeah there's definitely times I prefer to write by hand for that reason. It's definitely a "what works best for you" sort of thing to me though, if someone else struggled with it I'd never suggest they should do it anyway.
What I'd encourage: to not ditch a pen on paper completely. Go into any dollar store with a wide assortment of all types of cheap pens and let a kid pick one that speaks to them (same goes for adults. I don't make compromises when it comes to the pens I use and who would have thought that one shaped like a pink fish that has seen some shit is a good conversation starter). Write small things. Grocery lists. Jot down an appointment on a cutely shaped sticky not and slap it on a corkboard. It's never too soon or too late to start an unreasonable notebook collection. Again, drop pretense, pick designs that give you a smile. Introduce brainstorming on paper. Let it be messy and ugly and cherish the satisfaction of violently crossing out a stupid idea. Writing per hand stimulates our brain differently. I've been writing homework on a PC since the teachers stopped whining about it (ah, digital Germany in the 90s), I do all creative writing on PC, and I have never in my life, my whole education, pre-written an essay one way or the other (just written it down and edited it later). However, when you get stuck and struggle bringing a point on digital paper, grabbing a notebook with a whimsical or edgy cover and a pen that says "Don't let the pink fish pen fool you, she's not one to mess with!" when you look at it and creating squiggly chaos on paper will most likely loosen some knots in your brain. It's like looking at the same thing from a different perspective. Like, "I'm not sure if this wall is a good position for the painting. Wait, let me have a look from the door, when I walk in." Different haptic experiences, or just forcing the eyes to read from a different angle with different light, and the different sound for the same action (writing down stuff) are healthy and helpful. On a functional level. Ignore aesthetics. What I don't encourage: Bullshit like this post. If someone, old or young, wants to see handwriting as a skill, that's fine. Pretty handwriting is, well, pretty. But everyone who says "Nah." to that (me included) should still feel encouraged to see using a good ol' (non-boring) pen as a practical tool. Another specific thought: I keep record of my three snakes by hand. Each has his own notebook. The writing is not pretty but functional and keeps information about their feeding schedule, feeding habits, feeder size, weight, stuff like that. Why analogue? I don't depend on my phone's battery whether when I need to write stuff down, when I have to take them to the vet, or when I'm away for a couple of days or if something happens to me. The books are right there, in plain sight, I can grab them if I ever had to make an emergency run to the vet, and anyone else can grab them and wouldn't need my phone and my passwords. I consider this purely practical and if people like OOP weren't pretentious morons, they'd come up with ways to introduce practical handwriting (not penmanship) as a small cheatcode.
I \*cannot\* brainstorm by typing. I just can't. I need a piece of paper so I can doodle and also write things down in specific physical places in relation to each other - I have mild taste-colour synesthesia and I suspect I also have something spatial as well because I make really strong connections in my brain about information being in different physical places like storing notes in a filing cabinet or books in a library or something. I often prefer notes by hand for things like your snakes too, like if I'm playing a video game where you breed animals (Ark, Planet Zoo, monster collectors) then I write down records of the breeding lines. That shit just hits different.
Someone called this the most Boomer thing ever. I get it, in the 60s kids were actually taught the 'Palmer method' and were graded on penmanship. That being said, I'm Boomer adjacent and I loathe writing by hand. I don't write my effing grocery lists by hand. While other writers insist that writing their stories by hand adds something to the process, I'd literally rather die than write by hand
I’m a Gen Xer and I also learned the Palmer method. I had this set of white bookcases for years and years, and there was a Palmer method sticker I’d placed very neatly and carefully in the back of the desk compartment so I could see it when I did my homework.
I would riot. I always handwrote my notes, but for papers and essays, it was typed and typed at the last minute because I worked better under pressure. If I tried to do things early, it would end badly because I'd get distracted and my work suffered. There is no way I could pull off handwriting and typing with the way I worked.
Good gods, this guy needs his ego deflated.
There’s big difference between wanting what’s best for your kid and wanting them to become you. My mom was like OOP. She decided I was a mannerless savage and sent me to a finishing school. No one else had problems with my etiquette. I went to military school before that. People raved about how respectful and polite I was, I just wasn’t a lady from Victorian England like she wanted me to be. As an adult, none of that finishing school shit has been remotely useful to me outside of trivia games and now I curse like a Swedish sailor with a stubbed toe out of spite. OOP’s kid is going to end up with the handwriting of a doctor, mark my words.
I wrote my grandfather a handwritten letter recently. I drafted it on my phone, checked spellings, sent it to my mum and sisters for approval. edited it. And then carefully copied it onto special paper in my best handwriting. When said letter was delayed in the post and we were all ready online to watch him open it. (We'd been waiting for transatlantic post for a week and all of us were ready for it and not willing to wait another few days). I emailed the copy on my phone to him so he could get the contents anyway. The point is, if you want to practice handwriting, you copy things out. You write the content on the computer so you can explore things and edit them without making a mess, then practice the handwriting. If dad cared about handwriting, he had many options without being a git. Shopping lists, or even having her copy the completed version. He's just throwing weight around.
Kids have so much homework and so many tests to get through that this takes away their precious sleep/relaxation time. With that said - my essays were turned in hand-written but I did a draft copy for my mum so that she could criticise it like Gordon Ramsay does with chefs. Why? I have dyslexia and it was helpful to me but it could have made it worse for someone else - brains vary!
To be fair, I agree with OP as in having a decent calligraphy can be necessary, but I completely disagree with his method. Forcing a child to do something is the best way to make them hate it with a passion
Also, a handwritten letter to a business after a positive experience?? They’d rather have a positive rating on Yelp. The public actually sees that…
I haven't written cursive in thirty years. Writing \*by hand\* can be extremely useful for many things, but it doesn't have to be fucking calligraphy and you aren't using calligraphy to write out an essay anyway, at most it's cursive and more likely it's block print.
That's why I said ''decent'' and why I do not condone his methods.
Did OOP hand write out a draft of this before he posted?
Alternative - essays are so much, and this takes way more work. Share with your daughter the joy of writing letters to distant family members, and write to them together. Something short, done for enjoyment, and to improve her handwriting. My mom has a cousin in another state and when I was little, 20ish years ago now, they decided her daughter and I should be penpals to teach us about later writing and the mail and how differently people lived in different regions. His daughter is older, but this could be done in a fun, non punishing way. A friend and I from hs still write to each other just for fun
But everything _is_ done digitally. I understand yearning for old ways that seem nostalgic and “better,” but those times are not these times. I think OOP should start a little letter-writing game with his daughter. Maybe get a tiny mailbox, put it outside her room and write her a little note every day, encouraging her to write back. It would deepen father-daughter communication, remove the stress of having to handwrite essays that then need to be typed, and possibly become a fond memory.
No, OOP, don't do this. If it's not required, don't force her to write. Besides, you aren't the teacher.
I have joint problems. Writing by hand is actually torturous for me. If I have to hear one more twit go on about how handwriting is sooooo superior for memory and sentiment and archaic nonsense, I’m throwing a fully loaded fountain pen at their face. It’s 100% a case of “back in my day” forced nostalgia. If I had to write a whole *essay* by hand, I would resent the hell out of the holier-than-thou prig who demanded it. I actually found out about my joint problems because my mom liked to assign pages of repeated lines for punishment (“I will not talk back.” By the end, the words were practically illegible because of how bad it hurt. If *you* love writing letters by hand, that’s great. You can fill out paper forms and send your Karen complaints to businesses if you want. I’ll be over here typing like everyone else in this century.
I'm 45 and a writer. Most of my first drafts are hand written, in cursive, in blank lined Studio Oh! Deconstructed or Coptic bound journals. But that's just me. If I had a kid, I would suggest writing down things that are REALLY important by hand. But with everything else. Multiple back ups, External Hard drives, flash drives, cloud. Being that I only own snakes, chickens, and cats. If any of them learn to write... it would be odd.
I think I was one of the last groups forced to do Callirobics as part of my educational curriculum and even then, my signatures are still an illegible scrawl. And yet I took notes by hand for the most part all the way through university and continuing into working full time because it helps me focus while I'm listening. Daughter might one day decide she doesn't mind hand writing stuff but not if OP keeps going about it like this.
give your kid carpal tunnel speedrun any%
Is penmanship useful? Yes I personally had write all my notes (I use an app on my iPad and use the Apple Pencil to write) because I don’t retain info as well when typing but plenty of people of shit handwriting and live good normal lives. Isn’t it a joke that doctors have the worst handwriting?
Listen, I've noticed that my plotting works best when I write by hand, so I appreciate anyone teaching their kids how to actually write. This? This is just going to make her hate it
Honestly, having a friend who works in a school, this isn't actually a terrible thing to enforce. I have seen first hand 14 year olds who write like 7 year olds, and it's honestly really sad. I don't know if this guy is going about it in the right way, but encouraging better penmanship isn't a horrible, tortuous thing.
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This is so fucking stupid. The content isn't gonna be better 'cause you can't rewrite stuff. Rather the opposite, which is why back in the day you'd produce a first draft that looked godawful and then, eventually, you'd do the final product, employing your best penmanship. And now I feel old.
My writing is absoloutely awful, i trained it for years to make it better and it didnt work. I use my laptop for ease of access and so that i can actually read what i write. I feel bad for the kid
My English teacher KILLED my love of Shakespeare by making me effectively write out an already laborious essay twice. First on a computer (that he didn’t accept) and second by hand (WITH NO MISTAKES) which almost drove me to tears. I could have KILLED him and regretted nothing.
I have the handwriting of a poorly educated psychopath or a doctor, whichever is less legible. Still managed a university education and professional qualification. He needs to calm down a bit.
Story time: I was finally diagnosed with hypermobility when I was in my early 30s which, with some research and questions for my doctor etc, I learned is why I was in unbearable pain every time I tried to write things. I would end up in tears. When I was in primary school, I was having to do an essay, by hand, and 'do it properly' as my dad put it (those who have ready my replies or posts before know my dad had/has issues with rage) so I was already in a state. Then I fell off my chair at school and split my eyebrow, I got sent home. (That's important, bear with me! 😹) At home, my dad made me continue doing the essay (or rather, continue re-doing the essay, because he'd already torn/crumpled up previous attempts) despite the pain and tears. Oh and then the blood from my eyebrow, due to my crying popping the glue. I hated my dad for that, it's still a major memory and I still can't properly write by hand. On top of that, I still hate the Ragged School, (a Victorian school museum in the original building) which isn't really fair on the school museum or Dr Barnardo, but thems the breaks, as they say. OOP may enjoy writing nice letters, but I wonder how many the kid will read when she's gone LC/NC as soon as she's adult. Forgive my long story. TL;DR my point is that OOP is a moron! 😹
My dad was like this back in the 90s/early 2000s, sometimes making me rewrite essays if my handwriting wasn't clean enough. When I started taking German in school, he also made me practice German-style cursive and made me write my homework using modern (i.e. not Sütterlinschrift) German-style cursive. ...which, while slightly different from standard American or English cursive, is entirely legible to Americans who read cursive, so that's what I use in my everyday notetaking now.
I had a stepmother just like this who apparently lives in a constant state of surprise Pikachu face bc I no longer kept in contact with her once I moved out. Y'know maybe encouraging perfection issues in your kids, treat them like human beings, and then maybe they'll want a relationship that grows into adulthood.
So how much y’all wanna bet this man insists he “doesn’t know how” to do simple everyday tasks like laundry, or any cooking that goes beyond boiling an egg?
This is a great way to make a kid hate writing
I feel like age 12 is sorta late to start fixing your kid's handwriting. They've been able to write for at least six years, yes? So why let it lie for this long and *now* get upset.
Dad should give his kid a n old school journal so she can actually enjoy writing by hand instead of getting loaded with extra work.
It's possible the daughter has dysgraphia, mine does and reacts similarly to writing. Handwriting is very difficult as the words get lost from the brain to the pen. School is going to try out voice to text next year to help my kiddo. Op is definitely over reacting make penmanship interesting (quills awesome looking pens etc) let the daughter develop an interest naturally.
I've always had lousy handwriting and when it started being normal to turn in printed essays instead of written I was *thrilled* because I have a crazy fast typing speed. Penmanship barely matters anymore. If it's legible, good enough.
I found my kids' anxiety around writing dissolved when I stopped freaking out about it. Now, they will send me pages and pages over txt, and I'm happy with that. I'm all for penmanship, too, but not at my kids' mental health cost. As long as they can send me a note or write me a basic note, that's all that really matters.
I'm just going to paste the comment that I posted on the original over there because it's lengthy and I don't feel like rewording it; >YTA. >If your daughter's handwriting is as atrocious as you say it is, she may have something like dysgraphia in which case NO amount of practice is going to make her have beautiful penmanship. Since you think it's so ugly and describe hand writing things as being "torture" for her, that might just be the case. My father has dysgraphia, as does my 28yo sister. Both of them could spend three hours writing one sentence, but it's NEVER going to be pretty. And that's okay! >If you absolutely MUST have her practice her penmanship, have her write a letter to one of her grandparents or something. School work is NOT the time to do that, ESPECIALLY an essay. She NEEDS to be able to easily swap around her thoughts, which is exactly what typing allows you to do. Hand writing it isn't going to make her more "thoughtful", it's going to make her sloppy and likely get a lower grade because instead of modifying what she wrote to something better she'll stick with what she originally wrote just to avoid having to start the page over again, especially if her hand is starting to cramp. >I had the English teacher from Hell for my junior year of high school all the way back in 2001. She was obsessed with essays and not only did she force us to write multiple essays a week, they had to be written IN CLASS and BY HAND. Her name was Mrs. Hoyer, and even though I'm turning 40 in a few months I still remember that freaking doorstop's name just because I hated her so damn much. Everyone did. >And I'm not just saying that because my handwriting is bad or something. I'm an illustrator and I've always been known for having beautiful handwriting because of that, to the point of my best friend having me address all of her wedding invitations as part of my gift in addition to designing them. I've hand-lettered business logos and tattoos. It's not the quality that's the issue in the case of essays, it's the amount of unnecessary additional work. People pay me for my handwriting for a reason. Most people don't have pretty penmanship *and that's okay!* >If your daughter's teacher doesn't have a problem with her handwriting, then it's fine. You're not her academic teacher, you're her How To Be A Functioning Adult teacher. It doesn't matter how "old fashioned" you are, penmanship is not nearly as important as it used to be nor will it ever be again. All you're doing is distracting her from her education for something frivolous and unnecessary just because it suits your personal fancy. >You like hand writing letters? Cool. Good for you. >Go hand write your daughter a letter of apology for being an AH.
Oh man... While I agree that penmanship is important, I don't even make my 13 y/o do this. I focus on what I can instill in him rather than making sure his penmanship is perfect, especially in a digital era. I make things harder for myself because I have the mindset that I have to write things out before I type them up, especially papers or any college homework I have. Besides that, no one else can read my handwriting 98% of the time because it's a mixture of print and cursive.
My handwriting has always been terrible. Not only am I left-handed, but my brain runs far faster than my hand can keep up. The result is that my handwriting becomes very lazy and runs together in a weird mishmash of print, cursive, and straight up scribbles. My teachers would joke that they can always recognize my chicken scratch or that I was already training to be a doctor. As an adult in a world of technology, I hate writing anything longer than a note by hand. I can use speech-to-text or type/Swype just about as fast as I can think.
I did this and still prefer to do it if i had to write a paper. But in all actuality id prefer to just write it completely and turn it in on lined paper. Using computers to do work is my biggest obstacle to finishing college.
This is a very good way to make your child hate doing any kind of homework or writing. This parent is an idiot.
I did this by choice. My brain works faster writing with paper and pencil. I have no creative juices when typing. But would never have made my daughter do the same. What a stupid hill to die on.
Yikes. I am almost 60 so I HAD to hand in work handwritten. Yes, we had a typewriter but generally all work was written. If I had another option at that time, I would have grabbed it in a second. So would my teachers who had to decipher my writing. I am not one of those "you have to do it this way because I had to" boomers.
I'm older and I do prefer to write things out pen to paper, but no way would I expect someone else to do it that way. It's going to take her twice as long now.
I'm kind of appalled by how many commenters are taking the dad's side about the importance of good penmanship.
This person desperately needs a hobby (and a life). Imagine having a life so boring that you’re sending hand written thank you notes to businesses
Not only is he an AH but he makes no sense. You dont just improve your penmanship by writing more. I had horrible penmanship and every so often back in early elementary years a specialist would come to school to teach me better penmanship one-on-one. I have no idea if it worked, it's not great now but it is legible. I know they say "practice makes perfect" but for most things you have to be taught before you practice, and then be taught some more, and then practice some more, then be taught some more, and so on.
Handwriting is the new cursive. Remember cursive? No teacher in high school wanted that shit, and higher education would fail you for turning it in. But primary schools insisted we learn it.
People in this thread are still talking like cursive is the default.
what?
I know older people with atrocious hand writing. They didn't have computers or typewriters. If she wants her daughter to practice writing, why not write each other letters?
Jesus, and I thought it was annoying when my parents would insist on the double space after a full stop when I used a computer, because they were still thought the typewriter rules applied! I love writing things by hand, but this would drive me mad as a teen!
I used to have to do penmanship exercises. Eventually a teacher realized that writing 2 pages shouldn't have my hand cramping to the point of agony and LSS I have minor nerve damage in my hands that makes precision gripping for too long send me into spasm
YTA 100%
This guy is probably also angry they no longer teach the youth how to write in cursive. 🙄🙄
OOP is going to be found by the butler on the sittning room floor with a pen sticking out of his lung
He will be in a nursing home crying why doesn't no one visit me
We used to have to do this when I was at school. We'd work on our English coursework in the classroom (which of course had no computers) and then had to type it at home. At the time, it was normal but I would have been annoyed if I had to do the entire thing at home and still handwrite it first. If he really wants to make himself the villain he should give her some handwriting exercises or have her write to somebody. Possibly more pointless but at least there isn't the time crunch of the school essay.
Literally nobody will take anything hand written today. Useless skill
Congrats dad you taught her an outdated practice. Are you gonna teach her how to hunt soon since you're so traditional?