Two or three hours of persistent hand action can be taxing on the human body, as many teenagers will know. As this year's HSC examinations get underway, a plethora of teenagers, who have spent their entire lives surrounded by digital information, will wonder why they are still required to handwrite their HSC responses. Why do a generation of young adults who have never had to write a letter, unless it was to Santa in the North Pole many years ago, still have to handwrite the exams which may shape their future?
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Your opinion on whether the HSC should be typed seems to boil down to whether or not you believe handwriting is an antiquated art. It is undoubtedly true that we increasingly communicate with each other through emails and social media; but why does that mean the HSC, which has been handwritten since its inception, should change to meet this standard?
If the HSC examinations are typed sometime in the future, the detrimental effects will trickle down to all the younger schooling years. Dr Virginia Berninger, a psychologist at the University of Washington, found that handwriting activates neural regions involved with thinking and memory, allowing children to express more ideas when handwriting essays. Similarly, children who first learn to write by hand also learn to read more quickly, as studied by Dr Stanislas Dehaene of the College de France. With the knowledge that their final exams will be typed – the exams which, arguably, their entire education has been leading to – children may see no tangible need to develop their handwriting skills, despite the scientifically proven benefits.
On the surface, typing seems to put every student on a level playing field (unquestionably, the legibility of different handwriting styles varies). However, typing opens up myriad possibilities for cheating, which the Board of Studies must recognise and seek to prevent.
Typeface can be enlarged to an inordinate size, allowing students to look over the shoulder of the person in front of them and copy their work. If the computers have open USB ports, students can smuggle pre-written essays or portable internet modems into the exam – and a USB or SD card, which can be as small as a fingernail, is far more discreet than a wad of notes.
Young adults can type faster than they can handwrite. This implies that the amount of knowledge adequate in the past is no longer adequate. Students who can rote learn substantial information will be able to replicate more information than they would have been asked to in the past. The HSC then becomes a more mammoth task, placing pressure on students to learn as much as possible and write it in the allocated time.
And what about people who cannot afford the latest technology on which to practise typing? The Digital Education Revolution, where the government gave laptops to students from Years 9 to 12, was abandoned by the Labor government last year.
Handwriting is an equaliser, and with practice, promotes equal opportunity. The HSC will surely be typed in the future, but I don't believe it should be in the near future.
Jonathon Parker topped Advanced English in the 2012 HSC.
