Has your child’s teacher said, “He just doesn’t want to write’”?

Does your teenager suffer from a sore hand after writing at school?

Has your uni student asked for Nurofen to help her complete a written exam?

Does your child have poor handwriting?

If you answered yes to any of these, please read on!

Why has the simple act of writing become such a chore for school kids these days? It is by far the biggest ‘gripe’ area that we have to deal with. “Aw, not writing, I hate writing, it sucks!” Or words to that effect! According to recent research one in three children struggles with handwriting. If this is true it has serious implications for their educational achievement. 

It is tempting to view this as a sign of laziness or apathy, but be honest, when was the last time you wrote a letter? I mean a real letter, with a folded sheet of paper placed in an envelope with a stamp? No, I can’t remember either, and yet most of us ‘oldies’ grew up in a time when letters still had meaning!

The truth is that all generations are now affected by our increasing reliance on computers, tablets and smartphones. We don’t need to write, so we don’t. It is that simple, and like any learned skill, if writing isn’t practised, the quality drops and the speed slows. The effect of this is bad enough for the over 35s, who spent their pre-technology school days working with paper and pen, but for the younger generation it is as if this once-essential skill had never existed.

This is hardly surprising as children are growing up in a world of tablets, phablets and smartphones; cursive writing is such a bore when you can ‘stroke’ or tap a screen and get the same results. Even the humble credit card has abandoned writing, with signatures now banned and pin codes the new security preference. 

There is also a generation of young teachers entering the profession who have a natural preference for technology. The circle is complete. iPads and laptops have replaced textbooks, homework is online and handwritten work is viewed as inefficient and time consuming. 

We must remember that handwriting is not innate, like seeing or talking, it is a learned skill that must be practised. With limited hours, huge administration demands and increased performance pressures, can we really blame teachers if they rely more on technology? Imagine the quick, systemised marking that can be achieved!  

So, is writing a dying art? Is it doomed to tread the same path as Latin and become a quaint antiquity practised by the few? I sincerely hope not, because writing is more than simply communicating. Writing is a slower, more thoughtful process than typing. It involves planning, attention to detail and commitment to task. It is a complex skill that affects cognitive development and exercises visual, motor and memory circuits. When we write we develop our hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills. According to the Wall St Journal, studies have shown that handwriting engages parts of the brain that typing doesn’t. 

The ability to write and the quality of the text are inextricably linked. Professor Rhona Stainthrop, researching children’s writing abilities, says that there is growing evidence that those who write faster and more legibly get better grades. We see it in the centre all the time; good answers lost in the midst of poor handwriting and slow writers who have not automated their writing skills adequately, so much so that thinking about their writing is getting in the way of developing their thoughts on paper.

This leaves you, as parents, with a tough task. Most of your kids are fighting against writing. Oh, there are still a few for whom writing is a natural part of the learning process, but for most it is an ‘old’ skill that doesn’t seem to fit in to their high-tech world. And yet, in the ‘real’, working, world, writing is still very much in evidence. Meeting notes, supply lists, a quick reminder to a colleague, even the famed ‘napkin’ planning session, all come alive through writing. Even now there is no substitute for pen or pencil on paper; it’s a quick and effective low-tech way of communicating.  

Which makes it all the more important that you encourage your kids to write at every opportunity. In the centre we use different approaches to encourage writing. For instance, we allow kids to illustrate their writing, so drawing becomes the reward for writing. We also choose engaging writing topics, like the Minecraft contest we have running at the moment; kids who never write are suddenly producing pages of text! 

The next time your kids want something, for instance a ticket to the Royal Show, ask them to put it in writing. Encourage them to explain in words why they need or deserve to have their prize. If it isn’t convincing enough, work with them to edit their writing so that it achieves its objective. A bit of coaxing and extra work now will pay dividends later on when your kids are able to achieve at university or work because writing is a practised skill that enables them to communicate effectively. 

The other day I overheard two of our students chatting outside as they waited for their lessons to begin. The conversation was about Minecraft, a game that has captivated millions of kids around the globe and mystified an equal number of parents.

Jack had brought with him a manual to Minecraft, something Frankie was eager to see as it might finally explain why Jack was consistently able to destroy his carefully crafted Minecraft creations. I quickly realised that this was not a brief chat about the latest computer game, this was serious discussion between two ‘kings’ about the relative strengths of their kingdoms and the strategies they would employ to improve them. In other words, it was an eerily adult conversation.

It started Mark and I thinking about the Minecraft phenomenon. If you are a parent and the title of this piece annoys you, makes you groan or, worse, fills you with the dread of the gaming illiterate, you are not alone. For every child addicted to mining, creating and bashing their way through a make-believe world, there is at least one parent struggling to understand the attraction of a game that visually at least appears to be stuck back in the 80’s.

Which raises a simple question: what is it about this game, which to adult eyes appears clunky and unrefined, not to mention bewilderingly confusing, that attracts the relentless attentions of millions of kids around the world?

To understand this perhaps we need to consider not how it appears, but what it is. To use references that ‘older’ generations can connect with, Minecraft is Dungeons and Dragons, Snakes and Ladders, Monopoly, Meccano, Lego, an adventure playground, a trip to the beach with a bucket and spade, the first time you watched Star Wars or read Lord of the Rings, dress up games as a child when you were a King or Queen, a knight in shining armour or the first man on the moon. In other words, it is imagination unleashed, a limitless landscape of opportunities with the tools to quite literally create anything that pops in to a young and fertile mind.

Looked at from that perspective, how could a child not be captivated by the possibilities? When everything else in their lives is limited by parental authority, teachers rules, age and height restrictions, difficulty or boredom, or simply unattainable, and as an alternative they are offered sovereign rights to their own kingdom, it’s not really difficult to understand the attraction, is it?

Now, before you write Minecraft off as ‘simply a game’, you may be interested to know that a school in Stockholm has added it as part of their standard curriculum for 13 year olds, as it helps them learn about planning. And there are many other educators and schools around the globe who now appreciate its benefits and are including it in their planning.

Spend ten minutes with an avid user, as I have, and really pay attention instead of umming and saying “yes, interesting” before turning your attention back to the news, and you will quickly end up with a tick list of the skills they will need as adults. Strategy, planning, patience, numeracy, literacy, short and long term memory, the ability to prioritise, negotiate and organise, multi-tasking (more men should play this game!), keyboard skills, IT skills, visualising; the list goes on and on.

And now, amazingly, Minecraft has added social awareness to the list. Another of our students, Jaymie (yes, girls play Minecraft too!), is part of a peer group that creates and sells papercraft Minecraft characters at school and donates the proceeds to charity. Thanks Jaymie for the pink character your drew for us yesterday too!

I am sure the arguments, pro and con, will continue to swirl around the virtual land, but I am staggered at the number of ‘adults’ who argue against Minecraft and dismiss it as simply a ‘computer game’ without properly researching it. I challenge them to spend ten minutes playing it and not come away bewildered and confused and at the same time impressed by the sheer skill and determination demonstrated by the eager young minds that dance around this ‘second home’. 

What to older eyes appears to be a game of limited appeal, with poor graphics and clunky controls, is arguably not a game at all but instead a proving ground for the next generation of adults-to-be. Think back; most of the classic ‘instructional’ toys from the past, including Meccano and Lego, were solitary in nature, whereas Minecraft is online, global and highly interactive. They may not realise it, but they are already the ‘peacekeepers’, ‘UN’ and ‘global corporates’ of the future. Adults shouldn’t be concerned about Minecraft because it is a ‘video game’, but instead because it is training them to be more adaptive, inventive, articulate and adventurous than we are!