please print clearly

In a Washington Post story today on the demise of cursive handwriting, this passage culled the objection:

...academics who specialize in writing acquisition argue that it's important cognitively, pointing to research that shows children without proficient handwriting skills produce simpler, shorter compositions, from the earliest grades.

What a poor argument. To save time, let's just take for granted that the handwriting skill level is in fact the direct and sole cause of "simpler, shorter compositions." Okay. Now, what on earth is the reasoning behind faulting simpler and shorter compositions? It cannot be because complicated and rambling compositions are more desirable, nor that the thinking and writing skills required to produce "simpler and shorter" compositions are inferior. On the contrary - concise, precise writing is the product of developed skills.

So how to address this preposterous notion? One can only hope it is the messenger's fault; perhaps Margaret Webb Pressler did a sloppy job of paraphrasing. Perhaps it is the ideas within the composition which are not thought through, or that important information is missing from these compositions, when compared to the compositions regarded as superior? We cannot tell. Otherwise, if cumbersome, verbose, and lengthy compositions are rewarded in schools today, I propose there are more important things to worry about in writing classes than whether students write longhand, print or type.

(Obviously, this post was written by a professional writer who barely passed cursive class, and in adulthood has nearly illegible handwriting; otherwise, it would have been longer; if the correlation is proportional - much, much longer.)

The Handwriting Is on the Wall: Researchers See a Downside as Keyboards Replace Pens in Schools