No more handwriting in Indiana

I had a friend once whose former husband used to type the child support checks he sent. She thought it was sort of strange and I must admit I thought so too.

But maybe he was just years ahead of his time. Either that, since I lost touch with the woman in question, her ex may have moved to Indiana and become a member of that state’s Department of Education.

I say that because that department has now decreed that schools no longer have to teach writing in longhand to students. Instead, they are expected to become proficient on a keyboard.

According to Indiana clinical psychologist Dr. Scott Hamilton, after students are taught how to sign their name in cursive, “The time allocated for cursive instruction could then be devoted to learning keyboarding and typing skills. From an intuitive standpoint, this makes sense, based on the increasingly digital world into which this generation of children is growing up.”

Yeah, it does make sense. But are they going to teach students to type on a standard computer keyboard or on a Blackberry?