Write it down!

Read, Read more, we’re constantly exhorting kids, sometimes accompanied by the promise that the more they read, the more successful they will be in life.

Now there’s slow but growing recognition that writing is as important as reading in the learning process, and that more needs to be done in our schools to hone the kids’ writing skills. Even more importantly, there are researchers who are now looking into what goes on in the brain when we write, and discovering how writing enhances our learning abilities.

There’s so much research on writing that I will need two columns to share some of the more important findings, as well as some experiences and observations from teaching.

Writing as exercise

I’ll start out by describing what writing does.

About two weeks ago I was riding with two College of Arts and Letters professors—Robin Rivera and Ruth Pison—to a workshop on general education, and we got to discussing what the Philippines’ new K-to-12 system might mean for college classes in English and Filipino. Would the extra two years of high school now produce students who are sufficiently proficient in the two languages and make college language courses redundant?

We all laughed at remembering how we ourselves, returning to school to do our master’s and PhDs, found it excruciating to get back into the habit of writing essays and reports… and exams.  Writing is pretty much like exercise and sports; if you don’t keep writing, you lose your conditioning and it takes time to pick up again. On the other hand, the more you write, the easier it becomes. Take it from someone who’s been writing columns for 17 years.

We agreed that a good grasp of language is necessary to thrive in school, and in life. But we were skeptical that writing proficiency can be achieved with the extra two years in high school.

Writing well comes with constant use, constant practice, with different skills that build up. In preschool, kids learn to write out the letters, whether alphabets as in English and Filipino or the more complicated scripts in Chinese. Later, they discover the wonders of putting the letters together into words, and words into sentences. They move into adventures of storytelling (including writing letters to Tatay and Nanay, or Lolo and Lola).

Then come the written exams, book reports, and term papers, which students see more as torture… until later in life when they get to see that these are meant to connect hand and brain, training them to process ideas.

Writing challenges us to collect and organize our thoughts and to turn these into a form that can be stored and shared.  Returning to what we write is recollection at its best, sometimes with pride, sometimes with wonder, and occasionally with horror (“Did I really write such drivel?”).

Writing is reflexive; it makes us debate with ourselves and challenge many of the assumptions we have about our work, our lives. Writing challenges us to learn to explain issues and procedures to others. Finally, writing goads us, makes us more inquisitive as we realize we have missing pieces in our tapestries of knowledge.

Note-taking

Note-taking while listening to lectures is so undervalued in schools. This is where neuroscience research has been most revealing. I was alerted to this research by an article in the New York Times last June 3 (Maria Konnikova, “What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades”) summarizing neurological research into handwriting. That led me to all kinds of articles in journals with the most intimidating names, for example, “Neuropsychologia” and “Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience.”

Put simply, when we take notes, we are “talking” to our brain, imprinting those notes with a greater chance of recall when needed.

But note-taking in school has declined over the past 30 years or so. First there were the photocopiers, which meant students were less inclined to read and take notes by hand.  It’s always easier to have the entire book, or a classmate’s lecture notes, photocopied. I had to deal many years back with one professor who was the object of strong criticism from students about his inability to teach, worsened by perceptions that he was pulling their leg(s): a bolero, trying to project that he knew a lot. When I entered his office I knew what had gone wrong. His bookshelves were overflowing with books, but I realized that most of the books were photocopied… and that the professor probably had not read most of the stuff.

Then came the Internet and Wikipedia, worsening the situation as students, and faculty, took the easy way out of cutting and pasting rather than writing out notes. Worse, the cut-and-pasted materials would then get passed on as an original work. In a word, plagiarism.

Reading and note-taking force you to be more discerning, to choose texts which you feel are relevant, and “send” them, by handwritten notes, into your brain for processing. When it’s time to share what you’ve learned from those handwritten notes, you tend to have a stronger command of the information, knowing what to use, and how to present it.

I’m often asked to summarize what happens in a workshop or conference, sometimes even two or three days of sessions, and people ask how I’m able to synthesize so much stuff.

You guessed it: note-taking. I take lots of notes, and they’re handwritten—a habit picked up in school, in the pre-photocopying, pre-Internet era. Becoming an anthropologist sharpened that handwritten note-taking skill because of fieldwork, where you learn to listen and observe. Through the years, I’ve learned to divide the notes on a sheet of paper even when I’m jotting them down because listening—and writing—allows me to identify common themes.

That skill became even more important when I became an administrator. Whether visiting dorms or communities, or being briefed by colleagues, I find note-taking important to pick up on what needs to be done, and to prioritize.

On Friday I’ll talk (write) about how the fancy brain research is showing why we need to go back to foundational skills around handwriting, and how good handwriting—which is rapidly disappearing—enhances reading, language acquisition and critical thinking.

Don’t worry, I will write about how we can still tap some of the modern technologies, like the use of laptops and tablets, while preserving the benefits, and joys, of handwriting.

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