Editing The Pen Addict 221/transcript (section)

== Notebook Frustration ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, as thrilling as that was, the notebooks got me a little angsty. And when I started writing the show notes, that angst came out in these next few topics. A little bit. And it's really just the first one. The other stuff's fine. But I just got on a roll and just started going through the notes that way. But our nemesis, I'm going to call her, Ann Truebeck. If you guys will remember that name, she's the one that was on the Freakonomics podcast. I think Stephen Dubner did that. I don't know if his partner did that one. But I think it was Dubner was the host on that one. And she was, she's writing a book about, essentially, that handwriting can just go away. We don't need to learn it. It doesn't matter. And she, this came back to light because she did an opinion piece two weeks ago in the New York Times, in the, you know, in the op-ed section called Handwriting Just Doesn't Matter. And she goes through all this historical stuff of why, you know, how we've evolved over time. And no one, you know, scratches on caves with rocks and sticks anymore and things like that. So, you know, but it's just all this nonsense. And then what really, you know, that's fine. I'm good with all this. You know, she's going through the failings of handwriting through time, how it's changed and morph, why we should move into digital things and things like that. And then at the end, the very last paragraph, she has to drop in the thing that bothers me the most about her. And it's this first sentence in the last paragraph. She says, but as a left-hander with terrible handwriting who watched my son struggle to master cursive, he had to stay inside during recess for much of the third grade because he wrote his J's backwards. That is a loss I can weather. That drives me insane. I just want to come through the computer at her when she writes nonsense like this. She did this on the podcast. She said her son had issues. I think they changed schools or something in second grade. It was a second grade issue on the podcast where her son, you know, was trying to learn handwriting and couldn't get it. I think my daughter wrote her nines backwards for about two years. I mean, this is what kids do. It's part of the learning process and they need to be taught that so they can write it normally.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Your son had to stay back from recess for all of third grade for writing his J's backwards. I doubt that. He just needs to keep going and keep writing and keep learning. And then the J's happen. You know, he's not going to write his J's backwards forever. You know, you don't see adults walking around sucking their thumb. You know, it just stops. It's infuriating when she invokes her son not being schooled properly or not being able to do everything perfectly right out the gate. When, you know, I've seen my daughter go through the same thing and it's a completely normal thing. Like what she's saying with her son is not abnormal. That's such a normal thing going through first, second, third grade as you're learning to write, as you're trying to pick up just printing. And I'm not even talking about cursive here. Like, you know, I just want the kids to be able to learn handwriting. I would like them to be able to read, to write cursive because it helps you read cursive. It helps you study all the historical documents. It helps you. It's just good for your brain. There's no reason why you should discount handwriting like she wants to discount handwriting. And just to be perfectly clear, the tagline at the bottom of the post or the article in the New York Times is, Ann Trubick is the author of The Forthcoming, The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting. So, I mean, she's trying to sell a book. And that's fine. But the way she invokes her child repeatedly really bothers me because I've had kids that have gone through this stuff and have learned, you know, over the years just by practice, just by doing their homework. You know, we'll sit there and write pages of the letters that they're not working on, that are not coming out right in their hand, and they get frustrated.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's part of growing up. It's part of learning.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's like saying that we shouldn't learn mental arithmetic anymore because we have calculators. Right? But, I mean, we still do that stuff because there's, like, basic understanding of just the way things work. Maybe in 50 years we won't teach Kursiv in school anymore. Maybe. Right? Maybe for whatever reason it just won't happen anymore. But right now it's still something you need to know. You know, you need to know how to write. You need to know how to fill out a form. Yeah. See, it's a skill that kids need to learn. And quite frankly, kids will always struggle with it. I still struggle with writing at times. Like, I get my P's and my B's mixed up and my D's. Anything that looks like that shape, I get them all mixed up constantly. And I don't know why I've always been this way. It's just a thing that's embedded in my brain just to get those mixed up. Like, it just happens. Yes. Like, but I don't think any, I mean, I don't know what kind of school is doing that to a kid. Right. Right. Like, keeping them in every recess. Maybe they do sometimes. You know, for extra, like, extra training, extra help. But that's also not a punishment. Like, they're trying to help him. Right. It's not being detained. Like, they're trying to help the kid. I don't know. I mean, clearly this upsets her for whatever reason, and I understand that. But I don't think that decrying, I mean, we spoke about this before, right? When the article came out.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, when they did the podcast. It was a few months ago when they did the Freakonomics show, when she was on there.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But I don't think it's reason enough to decry that handwriting should be over.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Right. So we put the, so that was two weeks ago. Last week, the opinion page ran all the letters to the editor that they got, or some of them. There were seven that they posted. Not one of them supported her. Like, they were all, you know, pretty upset with her conclusion. Which generally, when you see a divisive article, you'll get both sides' responses represented in a paper like the Times. You know, in the op-ed letters. You'll get, you know, some people fully agree. Some people disagree. Some people in the middle. This was all just disagreement down the board. So I thought that was kind of telling. It's, I don't get it. I don't know why you want to make this your thing. Like, why is this your platform? I don't understand it. And I never will. So there's that. But one thing I do understand, Myke, is the value of a good shave. And boy, I had a great shave with my Harry's razor this morning.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Look at you. You're just, you're so good at this. I try, man. You really do.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And Truebeck got me ramped up.

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