For young children the problem of writing with hand is twofold. First there is not enough motor control, children spend anywhere between 2-4 years to learn "good" handwriting. Some never get this even as adults. The physical strain of writing with hand is so much that there is no scope for reviewing or editing it, making it better. In fact it is given as a punishment "write this 100 times!". As adults we typically use typed stuff which we can edit, review and rewrite with much ease using word/text processors. This allows cognitive as well as physical affordance for the users. Now young children, by forcing them to handwrite, are denied both these affordances. Typing allows children to overcome the physical aspect of typing and focus on the content. I have had first graders touch-type in both Devanagari and Roman scripts just with 3-4 months of accessing the One Laptop Per Child. This immensely increased their vocabulary as well as expressiveness. When asked to handwrite the same, they would struggle even to construct simple sentences. Handwriting is a technology which was crucial in the past because we did not have a better alternative. Now that we have better alternatives they should be promoted and used. Studies like these muddy the waters. Did the authors of the study themselves only used handwriting to do this study themselves because it is beneficial ? Or they did use typing on a computer?
> The physical strain of writing with hand is so much
As a teacher my grandfather had a special fondness for teaching handwriting. He read literature on it and conducted his own experiments using his pupils, trying to figure out what worked and what didn't.
One of the things I recall vividly is him explaining to me as I started school, how it was vastly beneficial to use thick pencils when first learning to write by hand. He gave me, as he gave his students, a pencil he preferred which as I recall had a diameter about 1.5x a regular pencil. It was also slightly softer, around 2B.
As I recall his explanation was that the larger pencil required less motor skill precision, which lead to more relaxed fingers hence reduced strain. The softer graphite also required less pressure, again reducing strain.
As I recall he had found the reduction in strain really helped kids get comfortable with writing by hand.
I have had several quite funny (to me) anecdotes where I remember something vastly bigger (buildings that are "exactly the same but twice the height", huuuge houses from friends' parents, food being humongous, etc.). Don't underestimate the fact that as an adult you're about twice the size as when you were a kid learning to write! :)
That's why I estimate the diameter as 1.5X even though my memory feels more like 2X. In my case I had the larger pencils alongside regular-sized color pencils in my pencil case, so I do remember them being distinctly larger.
> For young children the problem of writing with hand is twofold. First there is not enough motor control
I feel like since I've mostly been typing things for the last 30 years that my motor control for hand writing isn't all that good anymore either. When I do write by hand it's less legible than it was when I was in my 20s (now in my 60s).
