Write of passage

Editorial | September 28th, 2016

Within the past couple of weeks, I had the opportunity to participate in a sidewalk chalk fest at one of the area public schools--I had the honorable title of “featured artist.” As one can imagine it had been quite a while since I spent considerable time in a high school environment. As the two other featured artists and I gave our critiques and offered insight into the students’ designs, I couldn’t help but overhear a student say to a friend, “I took art because it sounded easy.”

This comment elicited a sitcom-worthy flashback within my mind. How many times has that comment been uttered and reiterated? Why have art classes gotten the stigma of being a slacker class?

Is it because there’s no “A” (art), in STEM or is it because art rooms have a more casual or expressive atmosphere than math or science rooms--which makes sense. Everyone learns differently and identifies with certain subjects more than others, for example, my little sister once told me she wanted nothing to do with pie unless it’s math-related--and I’m quite the opposite.

STEM is an acronym for a curriculum focusing primarily on science, technology, engineering and math. A far cry from the three R’s--readin’, (w)ritin’, and ‘rithmatic.

Within some circles there was mention of changing STEM to STEAM according to Lisa Phillips an author, blogger, journalist, and arts and leadership educator of some renown as cited by The Washington Post.

Judging by the spelling and grammatical errors on social media that we all snicker at, one would think that the subjects of readin’ and writin’ were in desperate need of improvement in the 21st century--but then again how accurate are the three R’s when one of the “R’s” really starts with a “W”?

Speakin’ of writin’

Bic, a company best known for their ballpoint pens launched a “Fight for your write” campaign to “save handwriting.” Thus encouraging students and educators to...write. The company even issued a pledge on their website bicfightforyourwrite.com.

If only one could leave comments on the aforementioned pledge. We’d suggest encouraging kids to pass notes again--maybe even whole notebooks and code names if they are really dedicated to the cause.

The site includes activities, promotions, contests and printable handwriting trivia. A personal favorite bit of trivia from the website was, “15 minutes of writing each day helps your child become a better reader, improves hand-eye coordination, boosts their confidence and helps school performance.”

This makes sense, considering you use more than one sense to identify and create each character. Holding your writing utensil involves a certain amount of balance, pressure, and coordination. Plus, when turning in a legible assignment or job application (when the time comes) the recipient is given the impression that the penner of said document is willing to communicate.

Your editor is one of the few and the proud who still hand writes her notes and transcriptions. Whether they are legible is up to interpretation, but then again it may be the best method of security.

How many years has it been since keyboarding replaced penmanship classes? Learning to write is one thing, but penmanship was a thing generations before me had taken pride in. Will teaching students to write code replace teaching our youth to physically write? Imagine all of the distracted doodling that would be lost--and the strange gap separating the new generation from the generation(s) prior to that. Looks like we might all be communicating in emojis--the new universal characters.

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