Editing The Pen Addict 193/transcript (section)

== Handwriting Instruction ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' And that's kind of her basis for. The handwriting should go away and it should not be taught in school. The big problem with that is that such a privileged point of view.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And it's also a very unique scenario.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. So my daughter in this exact same time frame in second grade couldn't write her nines.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Forward for probably over a year, probably from second, probably into first grade into second grade. We would work on it and practice on it. And she would get mad because she couldn't do it. And it would just come come back every now and then it would creep up. But we worked on it. We practiced. So it's we know we knew eventually it would go away. Right. She's not going to write backwards nines for the rest of her life. And it just went away. So.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, I felt bad about I didn't enjoy that part for one.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't know if I don't know if it's helping her child. I mean, it sounds like it helped the child's confidence, which, of course, is really important. But. Yeah, I don't think that. I mean, she doesn't really go into detail as to whether they continue to try and practice that to help him with his handwriting skills, because no matter what this person believes on, no matter what schools they're able to go to. As the world exists right now, he still needs to know how to write. Right. Right. Like that is still something you have to do, no matter what your view is. You still need to be able to do it to get around in the modern society.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. And I just felt that the focus on that was just such a poor way to look at it, because it doesn't take into account people who are not in the same situation. People are not lucky enough to have the ability to switch their kids school kids, you know, in Africa that we send pens to all the time. You know, having a pen and learning how to handwrite is their way out. You know, kids who aren't fortunate enough to be in school systems with computers, they need to do this because that's the way to build themselves up and get them on in this world. And the way it was presented was like that whole part of the world doesn't exist, you know. And that was that was my biggest issue with the episode.

'''Myke Hurley:''' There were some parts of it that was, you know, very rightly pointing out some independent study, which shows that handwriting allows you to process information better than typing notes and things like that. And I mean, the whole episode, it presents things from both sides. I think that there is natural bias comes through. And if they would have had somebody like me or you on it, we may have been greater advocates for handwriting. They didn't really have they had advocates, but not really strong advocates. And so it was, you know, it was it was balanced, but not equally balanced. But my my takeaway from this, my feeling about this is I think cursive is nice. I don't think it's as important anymore. Sure. I don't know for how long we need to put an emphasis on actually teaching children that is a mandatory thing. Handwriting has to continue. And my feeling is for as long as we teach math, we teach handwriting. Because for all of the reasons that people say that you don't need handwriting anymore, you don't need math either, because computers do math.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. And, you know, I'm on my kids, not, you know, on them that much, but just the how, you know, math and science are really the important things that, you know, these days that we need to focus on. And I just think those even if the kids aren't going to be artists or, you know, which we didn't even cover that as part of, you know, why this needs to continue. But just having that kind of, you know, tactile way of figuring out problems in math and science, you know, can't always be done in computer.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So anyway, you know, some of my followers on Twitter, you know, they were right. You know, this is just like a huge clickbaity type of podcast and you shouldn't even bother with it. But, you know, I thought there were some.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't agree with that. These people are professionals. This is what they do. I think that they basically we are just, as I said, we have a bias and we're more sensitive. Sure. Sure. I think that it was a good job. But what annoys us was the people inside of the show as opposed to the presenters of the show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I thought it was a poorly presented point of view. You know, it was it was super short sighted. It was super privileged. And that was that was my biggest problem with it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So anyway, you know, is what it is.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And that made sense for people that haven't heard it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It was actually the the comments on the on their blog on that page. They had like twenty nine comments and they were universally against everything that they said in the in that episode. It was just kind of funny. So, yeah, but that's self-selecting. Yes, it is. It is. So anyway, let's get on to some other articles. I did some did some cool stuff last week while I was traveling. You know, I kind of load up on guest posts and, you know, I get a lot of guest posts and get some really cool ones, you know, presented to me. And and, you know, I kind of time them with when I'm not going to be writing as much like when I'm out of town at the L.A. Pen show. So what did you think about this first one in here, Myke? Left handedness and the greatest insult of all.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's pretty heavy stuff. It's maybe a little heavier than than my experience of being a left handed person. So it says Michelle Guo. Yes. She wrote a poem that she'd written years before.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. And then basically typed it up for you. And it's it's pretty heavy. But obviously, I didn't go through some of the experiences that are being laid out in this. You know, this seems like that there was. And I know that had happened. People were like beaten for for using their left hand. Sure. Sure. In history. It never happened to me. Luckily, never happened to my mother either. But there are things in here about, you know, like writing on a whiteboard, trying to find a left handed mouse that I can obviously associate with. But it's a nice and nice piece. And what I like, Brad, is it's something a little bit a little bit different.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, exactly. You know, Michelle just emailed me one day and like asked me asking me questions. I don't even remember what the topic was at this point. She's, you know, help me find a pen or whatever. And the way she wrote, I was like, you need to like write more. She's like, really? No one's ever said that to me. And then like this is the first thing she comes up with. And I was like, wow, that's pretty great. So I really appreciate her doing this. Got a ton of good feedback on this. Of course, the left handers came out in force and really appreciated it. So it was cool to do something like this. I thought I thought it was pretty awesome. So thanks, Michelle, for doing that. And the second one is kind of goes along the lines of what we're going to talk about later in the show. So, you know, in a in ancillary kind of way with the L.A. Pen show, Daniel, Daniel LeMay wrote a piece called What Makes the Stationery Community Great. And he takes it from the point of view as being a complete outsider, not what, a year, year and a half ago, not knowing anything about this community and how he was basically taken in. And what did you make of this piece? Pretty heartwarming stuff.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And there were things that I didn't know about Daniel. I mean, I have a great debt to pay to Daniel because he was the one who sent me the DDC debt prints. So I'm which is an example of the greatness of the community.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, me, me, me too. So I got some from Daniel as well.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And so, you know, that's a great example of it. And I couldn't I couldn't agree more. Everything said. And of course, you talk about the greatness of this community who pops up in there, who pops up in this piece, Brad? The king enabler himself. Mr. Thomas Hall, who I have been and you have been on this end of his incredible kindness. Right. And there's a part in there where Daniel had bought a Franklin Christophe, which he lost. And then Thomas sent Daniel one. Yeah. And, you know, that, you know, that is the incredible community that I am lucky and you are lucky to be a part of. And I love all of these people who do these amazing things. And it's so true. I'm part of many communities online. This is the one that I am happiest to be a part of because it never makes me sad. And the rest of them make me sad. This one never makes me sad. There are no there are no nasty people in this community. Everybody is out to help each other. And it's not like it's a small community either. Right. And that's what I love the most about it is that everybody that is a part of this thing that we're a part of are just genuinely nice people who like to talk about the things that they love.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And the experiences that Daniel had are kind of a recurring theme. You know, it's special that Daniel was able to capture this in words and tell about the story. This is not an isolated incident by any stretch of the imagination. And we've all been involved with things like this on both ends of the scale. So it's just really great to see new people continue to come find a home in the Pen community. And I'm glad we're able to play a little bit of a role in that. It makes me feel great.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I have some new stuff.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, this is we've been trying to get this is kind of stuff we've been trying to get to for a couple of weeks. Right. Yeah. Yeah. We've just been busy, busy and sick, you know. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We still still need to get to all of the ways I'm using my pens stuff. But yeah, true. True.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But let's talk about let's talk about new stuff. I want to hear this.