Are We Doomed to Forget Writing?
By James Donahue
I would never have dreamed that the skills I was learning with pencil and lined paper in the first grade might someday be lost to a generation within my lifetime. Yet the new computer/mobile communication devices in the hands of so many youth today appear to be leading us blindly down what I consider to be a dangerous path predicated on a forever continuation of electric power.
Schools are no longer teaching cursive writing. I am wondering if keyboard classes will be the next to fall; as will high school grammar classes. Even the skill of spelling seems to be under threat.
When I read the text messages left by youth on various social websites and wince at the many spelling and grammatical errors I wonder just how illiterate this new generation has become. They use letters that sound like words to abbreviate the full spelling, so that the word “you” becomes simply “U,” and phrases like “be right back” turn into "BRB."
At first I thought it was a clever technique to get around the absence of full-sized keyboards on the new tiny mobile texting devices carried around by nearly everyone under age 30. After all, most texting is now accomplished by just the thumb tapping on a miniature keyboard. Abbreviation certainly saves time in getting messages out when thumb typing is the best they can do.
But new technical reports are warning that because of this amazing technology, which includes not only the way we write to each other, but the way we bank and order products on line, the very art of writing and even using a writing utensil, is dying. Even scribbling a signature on an electronic keyboard is disappearing because of the growing use of chip-and-pin credit cards.
When I was in grade school we first learned to print letters, sound them out verbally, and utilize this knowledge while pouring through the old Dick and Jane reading books. Along with this came the teaching of cursive which involved the joining up of the printed letters. This soon evolved into handwriting. These were compulsory skills for us. But schools now are skipping that cursive step.
In schools around the world, the teaching of cursive writing is giving way to the teaching of typing skills. But what good are typing skills if the students are texting in abbreviated words with thumbs on tiny keyboards?
All of this may be well and good if we can expect the world to remain as it exists to us today. But nothing stays the same. We all know that a simple disaster such as super storms, volcanic eruption, or atomic warfare can blast large numbers of the surviving public back into the dark ages . . . perhaps for years or longer. It is known that a single hydrogen bomb explosion in the upper atmosphere might knock out electric power for much of the nation.
Can we exist without writing skills if such a disaster occurs? Are we not setting ourselves up for annihilation because of our own foolishness?
As a professional writer and a lover of good literature, I have to wonder who might be left to create the great books and stories of the future or teach writing skills once the lights go out. And if great literature is produced at such a time, will anyone be left capable of reading and enjoying it?
By James Donahue
I would never have dreamed that the skills I was learning with pencil and lined paper in the first grade might someday be lost to a generation within my lifetime. Yet the new computer/mobile communication devices in the hands of so many youth today appear to be leading us blindly down what I consider to be a dangerous path predicated on a forever continuation of electric power.
Schools are no longer teaching cursive writing. I am wondering if keyboard classes will be the next to fall; as will high school grammar classes. Even the skill of spelling seems to be under threat.
When I read the text messages left by youth on various social websites and wince at the many spelling and grammatical errors I wonder just how illiterate this new generation has become. They use letters that sound like words to abbreviate the full spelling, so that the word “you” becomes simply “U,” and phrases like “be right back” turn into "BRB."
At first I thought it was a clever technique to get around the absence of full-sized keyboards on the new tiny mobile texting devices carried around by nearly everyone under age 30. After all, most texting is now accomplished by just the thumb tapping on a miniature keyboard. Abbreviation certainly saves time in getting messages out when thumb typing is the best they can do.
But new technical reports are warning that because of this amazing technology, which includes not only the way we write to each other, but the way we bank and order products on line, the very art of writing and even using a writing utensil, is dying. Even scribbling a signature on an electronic keyboard is disappearing because of the growing use of chip-and-pin credit cards.
When I was in grade school we first learned to print letters, sound them out verbally, and utilize this knowledge while pouring through the old Dick and Jane reading books. Along with this came the teaching of cursive which involved the joining up of the printed letters. This soon evolved into handwriting. These were compulsory skills for us. But schools now are skipping that cursive step.
In schools around the world, the teaching of cursive writing is giving way to the teaching of typing skills. But what good are typing skills if the students are texting in abbreviated words with thumbs on tiny keyboards?
All of this may be well and good if we can expect the world to remain as it exists to us today. But nothing stays the same. We all know that a simple disaster such as super storms, volcanic eruption, or atomic warfare can blast large numbers of the surviving public back into the dark ages . . . perhaps for years or longer. It is known that a single hydrogen bomb explosion in the upper atmosphere might knock out electric power for much of the nation.
Can we exist without writing skills if such a disaster occurs? Are we not setting ourselves up for annihilation because of our own foolishness?
As a professional writer and a lover of good literature, I have to wonder who might be left to create the great books and stories of the future or teach writing skills once the lights go out. And if great literature is produced at such a time, will anyone be left capable of reading and enjoying it?