In 2024, the magazine Frontiers in Psychology published a study destined to ignite the educational debate: according to Norwegian researchers, the Handwriting would activate “significantly more elaborate” brain connections than typing. A year later, two European scientists – Svetlana Pinet e Marieke Longcamp – they have dismantled the research piece by piece, calling it “methodological quibbles.” Who is right? And why might this dispute change school curricula?
The Study That Started the War
<strong>The Eurobursar</strong> Audrey Van der Meer of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology observed 36 students as they wrote words like “trampoline” or “penguin,” first with a digital pen, then with a finger on a keyboard. Electroencephalograms (EEGs) revealed a spike in activity in areas of the brain linked to memory and movement during the Handwriting.
“When we write by hand, the brain receives unique feedback from the pressure of the pen and the shape of the letters. It’s like learning to play an instrument,” he explains. Van der Meer.
But there's a problem: nobody asked the students to learn those words. They just copied already known terms.
The criticisms: “This is not how you test learning”
Svetlana Pinet (CNRS, France) and Marieke Longcamp (University of Montpellier) they don't mince their words. In a study that responds to the Norwegian one, the researchers highlight three weaknesses: the students typed with only one finger, an unnatural method; they wrote without lifting the pen from the screen, an action rare in real life; and the sample involved adults, not developing children.
“We need tests on how we really write: with automatic correctors, ten fingers and distractions,” he adds. Longcamp. “To condemn typing based on such an artificial experiment is like judging a race car by driving it around a parking lot.”
Handwriting, the defense of the pen: "New data coming soon"
Van der Meer He doesn't give up. He's conducting a new study on teenagers who use Handwriting or keyboard for note-taking. Unofficial previews suggest that pen writers retain concepts better after a week, while typing produces longer but less structured texts.
“We do not demonize technology,” he clarifies. “But eliminating the Handwriting from schools would be like giving up teaching swimming because life jackets exist. The pen trains the brain in unique ways.”
Typing: The Role of the “Bad Guy” (With Some Extenuating Circumstances)
The keyboard is not the absolute evil. Pinet remember that students with dysgraphia find in typing an escape from the anxiety of a blank page, and that for example in Finland (where 79% of teachers use tablets in class) no decline in language skills is recorded.
A 2014 study by Pam Mueller e Daniel Oppenheimer (Princeton University) had already shown that Typists tend to transcribe words without processing them. But, as a note Longcamp, “the problem is not the keyboard, it's how we use it: we need to teach how to synthesize, not how to copy”. The advent of artificial intelligence could cause a massacre of all these words, in any case.
Typing vs. Handwriting: A Truce in the Future (Maybe)
The solution could be a technological armistice that includes the use of Handwriting to capture key concepts (such as mathematical formulas or new vocabulary) and typing to draft long texts or collaborative projects.
In Sweden, some schools they are already experimenting with hybrid notebooks: you write with a pen on digital paper, which converts your notes into editable text (without stress). “This way the neural benefits of the Handwriting, without giving up the advantages of digital,” explains a teacher from Stockholm. “Kids learn to navigate between two worlds, not to choose one.”