17 November 2018

WAZ: Writing your way to success

On a page dedicated to the topic of handwriting, the German newspaper Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung made reference to the STEP 2019 study. Dr. Marianela Diaz Meyer and Udo Beckmann, Chairman of the VBE Verband Bildung und Erziehung – with which the Schreibmotorik Institut is conducting the teachers’ survey – stress the importance of handwriting in the era of tablets and smartphones.

Many primary school teachers observe that children are increasingly struggling with learning to write by hand and developing fluid handwriting without problems. This was also the result of a Schreibmotorik Institut teacher survey from 2015: “It is alarming that two-thirds of children in secondary schools cannot write for longer than 30 minutes”, reports Dr. Marianela Diaz Meyer.

To get to the bottom of this, the Schreibmotorik Institut is drafting a further online survey with the VBE Verband Bildung und Erziehung and its 16 national associations among teachers from all types of schools: how well can our children write? What weaknesses are associated with learning to write? What motor skill deficiencies are apparent?

And the STEP study will of course deal with the topic of digitalisation. To what extent does the use of computers influence learning to write by hand? It is particularly important not to play off the two systems against each other, but to combine them in a beneficial way – such as by using interactive whiteboards or tablets with a digital pen.

In the end, it is crucial that children learn how to write by hand and get meaningful support while doing so.