P.J. Schwartz lives the life of a quintessential golden child.
The Ridgewood fifth-grader is a straight-A student. He’s mature beyond his 11 years. He looks out for his two younger siblings and always makes his parents proud, his mother Kerry Schwartz beams.
But there’s one area where P.J. consistently hears complaints, especially from adults.
“Most people I’ve come into contact with say my handwriting is bad and illegible,” he told me, more amused than embarrassed.
But it’s a weakness P.J. insists isn’t that big of a deal.
So he fails to finish his “n”s, making them look like “r”s. So the top of his “d”s often curve like “2”s. So he doesn’t press hard enough when writing because it hurts his hand. And his writing sometimes floats higher with each letter like a staircase and then descends, converting long words into miniature rainbows.
In a world of iPhones, Siri and emojis, P.J. rarely writes outside of school assignments, so he has never worried about his handwriting being immaculate, he says. And his teachers have learned to live with deciphering subpar penmanship, leaving his mom to confront a common dilemma facing parents in the digital age.
“Is it worth me stressing out about something that he doesn’t seem to be bothered by?” Kerry, 39, wondered in a recent phone interview.
Concern about kids’ handwriting — we’re talking about plain old print here, not cursive (RIP) — is far from a new phenomenon. In fact, it’s been en vogue since the Baby Boomers were in grade school. But 5,000 years after ancient Sumerians invented mankind’s first known script, the written word has reached an inflection point.
Today’s elementary school students were born after the advent of the iPad. Many of their parents, including Kerry, haven’t written a check in years. Even P.J., who loves coding and playing video games, makes his to-do lists in a Notes app. In the era of email and voice-to-text dictation, will kids really need handwriting at all?
The answer isn’t as simple as you might believe.
Learning how to write is still an essential part of childhood development, a building block tied to literacy and fine motor skills, said Stephanie Marcello, chief psychologist at Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care.
Yet these days, students are short on writing stamina. Teachers are far less focused on perfection or even technique. And parents are trying to bridge their own childhood experiences with a future they cannot predict.
I began asking about handwriting after a coworker mentioned her fourth-grader’s schoolwork is practically illegible. And I had heard rumblings that some students’ writing never recovered from pandemic-era virtual schooling. As a former education reporter who has written extensively on child development, I wondered if bad handwriting would really have any lasting consequences for today’s kids.
What I found through personal stories, conversations with experts, insight from children and ubiquitous internet hot takes is handwriting remains both practical and as divisive as ever. And yes, there’s still impressive penmanship coming out of New Jersey.
“You can’t just say, ‘Kids these days…’” Matthew Rose, 11, told me emphatically as I interviewed him at his desk at Clifton School 11. “Handwriting isn’t bad for everyone. In fact, most people I’ve met have good handwriting.”
But do kids still need to learn to write legibly?
Absolutely, said Amanda Rhodes, Rose’s fifth-grade teacher.
Do they need to perfect the art of handwriting?
Not unless they want their writing to look really nice.
“As long as you can form letters so they’re legible and that somebody can read them … the neatness of it does not matter,” said Rhodes, Passaic County’s reigning Teacher of the Year. “If you want to do hearts on top of your ‘i’s, go for it.”
The era of imperfection
Kerry Schwartz struggles to shake the way things used to be.
She remembers her “very Boomer mom” making her sit at the kitchen table in the mid-1990s with a fountain pen. Every letter had to be made a particular way. Each stroke of an “M” or “F” needed to come in exactly the correct order, the pen flowing with precision.
She knows P.J. doesn’t need that kind of stress. But she’s his mother. She can’t help but worry she hasn’t given him enough support.
Rhodes grew up in the same environment and understands parents’ concerns. But teachers have come a long way, she says, in realizing the final product is more important than standardizing each student’s handwriting.
As Rhodes’ students demonstrated their writing for me, everything from their elbow angle to the way they held their pencils was distinct. Some sat up straight, others hunched over or leaned far to one side. Matthew, who writes legibly with a purple pencil, wrote with his face just inches from his paper.
Even within the same lined sheets, students’ letters ranged from minuscule to extra large. For every textbook “r” and precise “s,” I spotted a slanted “i” or crooked “d.” And the class is clearly divided on just how low the valley of a capital “M” should go.
The writing is so individual, Rhodes can instantly recognize each kid’s work even if they forget to put their name on their paper. And maybe that’s just fine.
“Everyone doesn’t have to do the same thing the same way,” Rhodes said. “As long as you have a ‘Y’ on your paper, I’m happy.”
Less emphasis on form, combined with the abandonment of cursive instruction, has contributed to the age-old griping that each new crop of children isn’t up to snuff. But today’s students are unique — and maybe they deserve a break. They lived through the unprecedented chaos of virtual learning.
P.J. was a first grader still learning to close the loop on his “o”s when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down his school. Then he spent what felt like forever in remote or hybrid classes, completing assignments online.
“After COVID was over and he went back to school full-time … that’s when the teachers were like, ‘Oh, you know, his handwriting is pretty bad. But everyone’s handwriting is pretty bad,’” Kerry said.
Elementary school on a Chromebook had such wide-ranging and damaging consequences that handwriting is far from the top of anyone’s concerns. However, 83% of primary school teachers and school leaders surveyed in 2021 said the pandemic had a negative effect on good handwriting habits, according to education publisher Schofield & Sims.
The leading complaint? Decreased stamina.
In Rhodes’ class, one student shook her right hand after writing four or five short sentences. Her handwriting is neat and legible. But she estimated she can write only 40 words or so before getting tired.
Most parents recognize that handwriting is essential to building literacy skills, including learning letter sounds and forming sentences, according to Marcello. But the connection to fine motor skills can be easily overlooked.
Hours spent holding a pencil tightly strengthens muscles needed for brushing teeth, tying shoes, cutting with scissors and a range of other activities.
“Anything that is reaching or touching or grasping or pulling or shaking or squeezing,” Marcello said.
Kerry had P.J. do 10 weeks of occupational therapy to make sure he could tie his shoes tightly and wasn’t falling behind.
There are other ways to build these skills, like pop-its and puzzles. But the consequences of ignoring handwriting could be serious.
“The development of these kids is so connected to so many other things,” Marcello said.
A lesson from kids
By the time I arrived in Rhodes’ fifth-grade classroom, I had read articles dating back to the 1940s about the decline of handwriting. One bemoaned “the day of the curlicue and flourish” seemed to be over.
I’d also digested the latest Reddit threads declaring handwriting obsolete, such as this grammar-challenged post: “The only people that care about children having legible handwriting is the people that stopped learning anything in the late-1900s.”
I was ready to hear from the kids. Do they actually write anything besides their schoolwork? Do they really expect to use handwriting as adults?
Zoe Aragon, a soft-spoken 10-year-old with glasses, said she needs good handwriting for her journal, where she writes down her favorite memories. Yara Abdelsalam, an 11-year-old who likes to curl the tips of her letters, told me she writes poetry in a notebook and wants to be able to read it when she’s older.
And handwriting is essential to Natasha Carela Bonifacio, who writes with a classic yellow No. 2 pencil.
Her mother doesn’t know English and relies on her to translate letters and fill out important forms. She recently completed documents to help her mom sell her car.
“If I didn’t do that correctly, my mom could get in trouble,” Natasha told me as I admired her crisp penmanship, distinguished by its consistent form and deliberate spacing between words.
As I walked by their desks, I peeked at the work they completed before I came — writing they did when no one was watching. It was all legible. Yet several students seemed self-conscious about their writing and were unnecessarily self-critical.
I read their writing out loud, proving I could read it, and asked why they thought it wasn’t good enough. The usual answer? An adult had told them so.
“I think it’s sloppy,” Zoe said. “Like, my ‘d’s … are weird.”
The students agree they will need to have readable handwriting when they get older. Maybe to fill out important forms. Or job applications. Or even just to jot down a note.
I had been hiding my own handwriting from the class by asking them to write their names in my notebook and recording our interviews on my phone. When Yara told me she wants to be a journalist, I knew I had to confess.
“You can see my notebook,” I said nervously, flipping through pages to show her my frantic scrawl, sometimes so sloppy only I can read it.
“That’s not very neat,” Yara told me without blinking.
I told her what she told me earlier about her own handwriting: My brain thinks faster than I can write.
A few days later, I caught up with P.J. during a day off from school.
He declared his handwriting is just as good as his classmates.
And frankly, he doesn’t care what anyone thinks.
“I can perfectly read it,” he said.
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Adam Clark may be reached at aclark@njadvancemedia.com.
