在打字时代, 手写依然重要

Culture

文艺版块

Johnson

约翰逊专栏

In an age of typing handwriting still matters

在打字时代，手写依然很重要。

Two and a half millennia ago, Socrates complained that writing would harm students.

两千五百年前，苏格拉底抱怨写字会伤害学生。

With a way to store ideas permanently and externally, they would no longer need to memorise.

有了这种将想法永久存储到外部的方法，学生们将不再需要记忆。

It is tempting to dismiss him as an old man complaining about change.

人们很容易对他的这种观点嗤之以鼻，认为他是一个抱怨变化的老人。

Socrates did not have a stack of peer-reviewed science to make his case about the usefulness of learning concepts by heart.

毕竟苏格拉底不能用一堆同行评议过的科学研究来证明熟记概念的有用性。

Today a different debate is raging about the dangers of another technology—computers—and the typing people do on them.

如今，关于另一项技术的另一场争论正在激烈进行，即计算机以及人们用计算机打字的危险。

As primary-school pupils and PhD hopefuls return for a new school year in the northern hemisphere, many will do so with a greater-than-ever reliance on computers to take notes and write papers.

随着北半球的小学生和博士生重返学校并开始新的学年，许多人将比以往任何时候都更加依赖计算机来做笔记和写论文。

Some parents of younger students are dismayed that their children are not just encouraged but required to tote laptops to class.

让一些低年级学生的家长感到失望的是，他们的孩子不仅被鼓励，而且被要求携带笔记本电脑上课。

University professors complain of rampant distraction in classrooms, with students reading and messaging instead of listening to lectures.

大学教授们抱怨说，教室里的走神现象非常严重，学生们上课时阅读资料和发消息，而不是听老师讲课。

A line of research shows the benefits of an “innovation” that predates computers: handwriting.

一系列研究表明了出现于计算机之前的一项“创新”的好处，这一创新就是手写。

Studies have found that writing on paper can improve everything from recalling a random series of words to imparting a better conceptual grasp of complicated ideas.

研究发现，在纸上写字有许多促进作用，比如让人更容易记住一连串随机的单词、更好地掌握复杂概念等等。

For learning material by rote, from the shapes of letters to the quirks of English spelling, the benefits of using a pen or pencil lie in how the motor and sensory memory of putting words on paper reinforces that material.

对于通过死记硬背来学习材料，比如学习字母的形状和无规则的英语拼写，使用钢笔或铅笔的好处在于，将单词写在纸上的运动记忆和感觉记忆可以强化对这一材料的记忆。

The arrangement of squiggles on a page feeds into visual memory: people might remember a word they wrote down in French class as being at the bottom-left on a page, par exemple.

纸上排列的弯曲笔画会进入视觉记忆：比如，人们可能记得他们在法语课上写下的一个单词在纸的左下角。

One of the best-demonstrated advantages of writing by hand seems to be in superior note-taking.

手写最明显的优势之一似乎是在做笔记方面。

In a study from 2014 by Pam Mueller and Danny Oppenheimer, students typing wrote down almost twice as many words and more passages verbatim from lectures, suggesting they were not understanding so much as rapidly copying the material.

在帕姆·穆勒和丹尼·奥本海默2014年发表的一项研究中，课堂上打字的学生写下了几乎两倍的单词和更多的逐字段落，这表明他们并不完全理解，只是在快速抄写材料。

Handwriting—which takes longer for nearly all university-level students—forces note-takers to synthesise ideas into their own words.

而手写--对于几乎所有大学水平的学生来说都更耗时--迫使记笔记的人将想法归纳成自己的语言。

This aids conceptual understanding at the moment of writing.

这有助于在写字时加强对概念的理解。

But those taking notes by hand also perform better on tests when students are later able to study from their notes.

但当下课后学生可以通过笔记来学习时，那些手写笔记的学生在考试中的表现更好。

The effect even persisted when the students who typed were explicitly instructed to rephrase the material in their own words.

甚至当打字的学生得到明确的指示，要用自己的话重新表述材料时，这种效果仍然存在。

The instruction was “completely ineffective” at reducing verbatim note-taking, the researchers note: they did not understand the material so much as parrot it.

研究人员指出，指示在减少逐字记笔记方面“完全无效”：他们与其说是理解材料，不如说是鹦鹉学舌。

Many studies have confirmed handwriting’s benefits, and policymakers have taken note.

许多研究都证实了手写的好处，政策制定者也注意到了这一点。

Though America’s “Common Core” curriculum from 2010 does not require handwriting instruction past first grade (roughly age six), about half the states since then have mandated more teaching of it, thanks to campaigning by researchers and handwriting supporters.

虽然从2010年开始，美国的“共同核心”课程不要求对一年级(大约六岁)以上的学生教授书写，但由于研究人员和书写支持者的不断争取，大约一半的州已经强制要求更多地教授书写。

In Sweden there is a push for more handwriting and printed books and fewer devices.

在瑞典，人们正在推动增加手写和印刷书籍，并减少电子设备。

England’s national curriculum already prescribes teaching the rudiments of cursive by age seven.

英格兰的国家课程已经规定在七岁之前教授连笔书写的基本知识。

However, several school systems in America have gone so far as to ban most laptops.

然而，美国的几个学校系统已经到了禁止大多数笔记本电脑的地步。

This is too extreme.

这太极端了。

Some students have disabilities that make handwriting especially hard.

一些学生有残疾，因此手写对他们来说尤其困难。

Nearly all will eventually need typing skills.

而且几乎所有人最终都需要打字技能。

And typing can improve the quality of writing: being able to get ideas down quickly, before they are forgotten, can obviously be beneficial.

打字也可以提高书写质量：能够在想法被遗忘之前迅速记下它们，显然是有益的。

So can slowing down the speed of typing, says Dr Oppenheimer.

奥本海默博士说，减慢打字速度也是有益的。

Virginia Berninger, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Washington, is a longtime advocate of handwriting.

弗吉尼亚·伯宁格是华盛顿大学心理学荣誉退休教授，她一直倡导手写。

But she is not a purist; she says there are research-tested benefits for “manuscript” print-style writing, for cursive (which allows greater speed) but also for typing (which is good practice for composing passages).

但她并不是一个纯粹主义者，她说研究表明，“手稿”印刷式书写（注：字母和字母不连在一起）和连笔书写(可以提高速度)，以及打字(对于书写段落是一个好办法)都有好处。

Since students spend more time on devices as they age, she argues for occasional “tuning up” of handwriting in later school years.

由于随着年龄增长，学生们会花更多的时间使用电子设备，因此她主张在之后的学年里时不时地对手写进行“校准”。

And perhaps even into adulthood.

这种校准可能持续到进入成年期。

Johnson had not handwritten anything longer than a letter in decades before putting actual pen to paper to write this column’s first draft.

在拿起笔写下本专栏文章的初稿之前，笔者已经好几十年没有手写过比一封信更长的东西了。

Whether it made any difference to the outcome is a question that readers must decide.

手写是否对文章产生了影响，这是必须由读者决定的问题。

Socrates may or may not have had a point about the downsides of writing.

关于写作的不利之处，苏格拉底的观点可能对也可能不对。

But no one would remember, much less care, if his student Plato had not noted it down for the benefit of posterity.

但是，如果他的学生柏拉图没有为了后人而记录下他的言行，那么恐怕没有人会记得，更没有人会关心他的思想。