Justine Boyd/Supplied
Justine Boyd wonders why school students like her son still have to do written exams.
OPINION: The digital revolution has given us so much to write home about.
Alas, many of us now struggle to hold a pen.
Recently, a parent-teacher interview revealed that despite being coached to work online across all his classes to save paper and accelerate marking processes, my bright 15-year-old lad would be faced with two hour exams next year, which require a written response.
Unfortunately, this puts him at a significant disadvantage, as he and most of his peers languish when it comes to putting pen to paper.
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It appears that the art of penmanship will die with Generation X.
I recall a pre-teen obsession with calligraphy that was shared with many of my friends. We had pen pals organised through school, and having elegant stationery was considered a form of social capital that many strived for.
A great deal of time and effort in the 1970s and before, was put into teaching young New Zealanders to inscribe their alphabet onto the trusty 1B5 pencil, not with a pen until students were in Standard 1.
Students their HB eraser, and if you were fancy, you might carry your own pencil sharpener. There was always a desk-mounted sharpener on the teacher’s desk.
You would learn to print first, and you would not move onto the holy grail of cursive until your printing was up to scratch.
It was marked, sometimes with a smiley face stamp and, in my case, often with red crosses.
Good penmanship was also held up as a mark of good character. Although most of the bright kids in my class wrote so quickly it appeared they lacked moral fortitude.
Personally, I never quite mastered cursive, although I have a deep appreciation for the art form.
These days, you barely see anything written down, unless you write it yourself.
If you are lucky enough to get a card in the post from your grandmother occasionally, you should frame it. It may be worth a fortune in a few years.
As far as the high school population goes, we may be heading for a crisis if we don’t move exam practices into line with everyday classroom practices.
My lad is now prescribed 15 minutes of copying work every night in an effort to address this very real issue.
It hardly seems fair to teach a digital curriculum, and then expect our young ones to have been practising this very basic, yet no longer particularly useful skill at home, without being prompted.
There needs to be a change, and I, for one, will be writing to my MP, but not with a pen.
