News and Media
5 reasons kids still need to learn handwriting (no, AI has not made it redundant)
Article Source: https://theconversation.com/5-reasons-kids-still-need-to-learn-handwriting-no-ai-has-not-made-it-redundant-206939
The world of writing is changing.
Things have moved very quickly from keyboards and predictive text. The rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) means bots can now write human-quality text without having hands at all.
Recent improvements in speech-to-text software mean even human “writers” do not need to touch a keyboard, let alone a pen. And with help from AI, text can even be generated by decoders that read brain activity through non-invasive scanning.
Writers of the future will be talkers and thinkers, without having to lift a finger. The word “writer” may come to mean something very different, as people compose text in multiple ways in an increasingly digital world. So do humans still need to learn to write by hand?
Handwriting is still part of the curriculum
The pandemic shifted a lot of schooling online and some major tests, such as NAPLAN are now done on computers. There are also calls for cursive handwriting to be phased out in high school.
However, learning to handwrite is still a key component of the literacy curriculum in primary school.
Parents may be wondering whether the time-consuming and challenging process of learning to handwrite is worth the trouble. Perhaps the effort spent learning to form letters would be better spent on coding?
Many students with disability, after all, already learn to write with assistive technologies.
But there are are a number of important reasons why handwriting will still be taught – and still needs to be taught – in schools.
