Brewster Rockit by Tim Rickard for November 10, 2019

Bad handwriting is the cursive the younger generation.

But with typing you can go faster, be more legible and always use the excuse the computer error “ate” your work.

Of course it’s handwritten, I typed it in with my hands.

Must be the same school that makes him wear a helmet.

There’s theory, then there’s practice.

BR is such a great comic. Insights with wit, humor with sensibility. Silliness that is actually silly.

It’s true though. A number of studies have shown that notes taken by hand (with pen and paper) lead to better retention and learning. This is something I make my university students aware of, and they are usually quite surprised. Even the cynics have trouble arguing with the studies.

When I read this comic, I thought about handwriting as using a pen on pencil to do cursive writing, something that is becoming a lost art these days. But, as I thought about it further, I realized with the voice commands used with Google and other devices, typing on a keyboard might just be viewed as handwriting. Surely in a space station that houses children, most computer interfaces would be verbal rather than tactile.

Pam does not look convinced.

oh the irony

Of course.

Be sure to choose the “cursive” font…

After spending a day staring at spreadsheets, I find that writing the next day’s to-do list in cursive with a pencil to be soothing. Not as soothing as liquor, of course, but soothing nonetheless.

But hand writing doesn’t point out spelling mistakes. (A feature I cannot do without.)

Makes sense, if he wrote they wouldn’t be able to read it. He’d never be able to get his point across that way.

I’d be the first to say that be the case if I wrote it.

I visited my elementary school about twenty years after graduating; my fourth-grade teacher still was there. She took one look at me and said, “You’re the boy whose handwriting was illegible!” By the way, it still is.

She was a great teacher, and she never tried to “convert” me from being left-handed.

I was expecting it to end with, “What is handwriting?”

Ha!

And that’s why we can’t have Nice Theories about Improvements to Educational Methods.

Let’s hope he’s using a cursive font…

Handwriting improves brain-hand coordination and also cognizance and real life interaction. Except with physicians.

My handwriting was so bad when I was a kid that my mom was concerned, and met with the elementary school principal about it. Her answer: “Bob really likes machines, have him take typewriting when he gets to Jr. High next year”. Now this was back in 1960, long before the age of home computers! How little did she know that being able to touch-type would be a useful skill for everyone in the future.