What happens to kids’ brains when they don’t learn handwriting?

In today’s Big Story podcast, handwriting isn’t taught much anymore. That’s bad for our minds in ways we are only now starting to realize. The practice was phased out of most curriculums because so few of us use it in everyday life, and to make room for more digital literacy skills—which we believe are crucial for kids to learn as young as possible.

But new research is starting to show us the real purpose of handwriting—and it has to do with the way our brains process tasks. It turns out that annoying, painful cursive practice is what allows us to make the physical part of writing automatic and free our mind to concentrate on the meaning of what we’re putting on the page. So what happens to us when we’ve no longer got that skill?

GUEST: Hetty Roessingh, Professor at the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary

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