I was the last kid in my grade to get a pen license.
I never got my pen license.
I remember starting highschool and my teacher questioning me for using greylead on all my assignments, I told them I never got my pen license and they laughed and told me to use pen.
They didn’t explain that a pen license wasn’t a real thing, it wasn’t like you legally required a permit to use a pen.
But all through primary school “getting your pen licence” was such a big deal I genuinely thought it was some big formal process.
I had so much anxiety that first year of highschool thinking I was breaking the rules using pens without a licence until my mum explained that it’s just a fun motivational tool for young kids learning to write and I’m an idiot.
Just a heads up, unfortunately your reply has only just federated.
lemmy.world federation issues don’t seem to be getting better.
Ah, thank you! I’ve been thinking about moving over to Aussie zone - I had very little understanding of federation when I first signed up so just went with whatever instance seemed the most general, but I think this confirms it, time to get a new account.
Paywalled
I mean, they’re not really typing either. Watch them, they hunt and peck with a finger, because that’s how touchscreens work.
They’re not really learning EITHER skill well…and not having either is a bit of a problem.
That’s how I’ve been typing for over the last 2 decades since I never had a typibg class like my parents did. I’m a little better than hunt and peck, but I’m not much better.
I’m a two finger typer, I did have formal typing lessons in school but I never learned to touch type, my teachers used wpm and accuracy to determine if we were on track and passing, and my two finger method was working for me in those metrics.
I’m missing a knuckle and have bradydactyly, so my teachers sort of gave up when I asked for extra advice in learning to touch type, and I had no motivation to learn because everyone just had this attitude of “oh they’re disabled so they have to type weird, don’t bother teaching them the right way”. But I probably am fully capable of learning to touch type if I tried.
I’m not sure what my method would officially be called. It’s similar to hunt and peck because I’m only using my index fingers, but I’m not looking at the keyboard when I type, so there’s no real hunting.
Though if I have to borrow someone else’s computer I do need to hunt and peck for a few hundred words until I get a feel for that specific keyboard.
My handwriting is also shocking, and that I do blame on my hand deformities and disabilities. I’m dyslexic and dyspraxic and was diagnosed late in life so never had any support with handwriting growing up. My journals look like a serial killer because each entry starts of nice and tidy, with even spacing and kerning and text in line, then as it goes on the spacing gets uneven, lines get slanted, I’ll use 3 totally different fonts in the same word, like writing “anɴɑ” instead of “anna”, oh and naturally I write the “n” first then have to go backwards and fit that first “a” in. It happens because my cognitive ability to write fatigues so fast but my motivation to keep writing and writing fast never wanes so I just power through it and my handwriting suffers, and then my hand spasms because even with an adaptive pen grip, I still have functional issues in my hand.
But I love typing and I love writing by hand even if I’m not good at either, and I think that’s the important thing - not giving up on one method entirely.
By all means make students handwrite where it’s realistic… notes, forms, etc. but writing by hand, constantly, for over an hour, is just ridiculous.
