Is The Keyboard Mightier Than The Pen?
Keep Old School in Children’s Learning
By
Dr. Rachell N. Anderson
    Education has gone high tech. When I started my first teaching job, the ditto machine was my friend. The messy, purple inked contraption made it possible to spew out handouts, tests and homework assignments for my students. Technology moved from there to the mimeograph machine to the photo copier to the power point presentation. White boards have replaced black boards and technology in education has changed the way teachers prepare and teach and the way students interact and receive what is being taught. Students take notes on their laptops and tablets and in 2013, cursive writing was dropped from the Common Core Curriculum Standards that is shared by all states. Children and now required to learn to use a keyboard and print rather than the loopier cursive.
    The debate has erupted about whether this is a good thing.
At first glance, the battle between keyboards and pens might seem to be a battle of resistance to change and technology is merely another tool that we’ll get used to. But researchers have studied both sides of the issue and found advantages to each.
    Pens and keyboards bring into play very different cognitive processes. As a result, it helps to know what you get when you choose one or the other.
    Those who support the keyboard suggest that typing is faster and students can have more information for their disposal. According to Anne Throwback, associate professor of rhetoric and composition at Oberlin College in Ohio “What we want from writing is cognitive automaticity, the ability to think as fast as possible, with whatever technology we use to record our thoughts. This is what typing does for millions.” In addition, proponents of the keyboard argue “what really matters is not how we produce a text but its quality. When we are reading, few of us wonder whether a text was written by hand or word-processed.”
    In a paper published in April in the journal Psychological Science, two US researchers, Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer, claim that note-taking with a pen, rather than a laptop, gives students a better grasp of the subject. They hypothesize that handwriting requires different types of cognitive processing than typing on a laptop, and both have different consequences for learning. You can only write so fast, so your brain is forced to do more as your hand writes the crucial data. They believed writing longhand is a workout for the brain. And, because writing is slower it’s more useful in the long run. Writing involves the whole body and results in a greater amount of conceptual learning.
    Using college students as guinea pigs, Mueller and Oppenheimer put their theory to the test. They divided groups of students into keyboarders and hand writers for taking notes in class. They gave them a week to study their notes before a test. Those who wrote their notes outperformed laptop users. This suggests longhand notes may have superior external storage as well as superior encoding functions," Mueller and Oppenheimer write.
    According to Edouard Gentaz, professor of developmental psychology at the University of Geneva, “Handwriting is a complex task which requires various skills. Children take several years to master this precise motor exercise: You need to hold the scripting tool firmly while moving it in such a way as to leave a different mark for each letter.” The body remembers-making the learning long lasting. There is an element of dancing when we write by hand, a melody in the message, which adds emotion to the text.
    Another study from 2010 found that the brain areas associated with learning "lit up" much more when kids were asked to write words like "spaceship" by hand versus just studying the word closely.
    But does all this really change our relationship to learning?
    Studies show there are additional advantages to writing some things by hand that include:
1.  Handwriting stimulates more effective memory cues because you’re forming the context and content in your own words.
3. Handwriting reveals aspects of our personalities. How do you want to be seen by your grandchildren?     
4. One of the most effective ways to study and retain new information is to rewrite your types notes by hand. That helps to increase performance on material on which you’ll be tested.
    For me, there are many reasons to use both.
What’s A Person To Do?
1. Use pen and paper to make your brain sharper.
2. Use the keyboard to get more written material, faster.
3. Use pen and paper to become a better writers.
4. Use pen and paper to learn a new skills.
5. Use both for acquiring and reproducing materials on which to be remembered or tested.
© Dr. Rachell N. Anderson, Psy. D. June 3, 2016

  Dr. Rachell Anderson is a native of Tunica, a licensed Clinical Psychologist, a Professor Emeritus and author. She taught at the University of Illinois and ran a Private Clinical Practice in Springfield, Illinois for many years. She now lives and writes with the Tunica Chapter of the Mississippi Writers Guild in Tunica, Mississippi. Check out her website at WWW.drrachellanderson.com for more articles and books.

    In 1948, the United States declared the right to family as a human right and found it to be the most fundamental unit of social organization. Families provide the primary care and support for members of society from birth through old age. Family members understand themselves to be a part of that group and generally accept a degree of obligation to provide care for one another. It’s these people that Robert Frost may have had in mind when he wrote, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” As a member of the human family, they have to take you because you belong to them and you are one of them.
    So, family is primary for humans. The most obvious responsibilities for families are preserving and caring for children. This duty involves feeding, clothing, sheltering, teaching and keeping them from harm. Families are social institutions with their own histories, features, and functions and having their own goals and purposes. Families are valuable for what they can do for us, and for what they are and for what they contribute to our communities.
    However, there is no one picture that depicts all families. They come in many sizes, shapes, colors and configurations. They are expected to be a structure of love and trust. Even when these are absent, messages about how to be in relationships and in the world are forged by its members.     
    We get our identities from our families. Each of us is someone’s child, someone brother or sister and someone’s grandchild. Fragments of stories that parents, siblings, and other family members tell help children to build the narrative for their lives and construct their identities. As children acquire self awareness, revisions occur at about age 6 and they assume they are independent in their thoughts and beliefs. They develop that sense of self and incorporate or in opposition the narratives from family members. One feature that can’t be helped is family members encumber their children with a conception of how to treat and to think about others, for good of for ill.
    Families are expected to be places of love. Children need love just as much as they need food, clothing, and the other goods and services families provide. However, it is not a service like clean clothes, a hot bath or a dinner. Specific kinds of behaviors teach children how to develop interpersonal connection. This is a process for giving and receiving love that is designed to help children learn how to be in relationships with others.  When the child is an infant, the connection is one sided; the parents give and the child receives. But what they give is themselves. Children learn to give love by receiving it.  
    Family is where we get our morals. While adults are teaching children to walk, talk, eat and be civilized, they are also same teaching them how to see the world and also how to be in the world. In other words, how to make sense of life and your part in it. As a result, children learn their parents’ view on the world.  It may be full of both useful and useless materials. Parents can only teach what they know and are themselves a product of their world. If the messages are mixed with resentment, hate, intimidation, and misinformation about themselves and others, the child may have to unlearn some of the material to be acceptable and successful with their lives. This is where the idea (attributed to Socrates) that the “unexamined life is not worth living.” "The unexamined life" refers to a life lived by rote under the rules of others without examining whether or not one wants to live with those beliefs, feelings, behaviors or rules.
    Indeed, people are important in every aspect of out lives.  For better or worse, in good-enough families the sense of security that comes from knowing that we do not navigate this world alone is important. We need others. We value the ability to share our lives and our selves with others and find it tragic when people can’t do that.
    As we gather for Thanksgiving, an important family holiday in these parts, we often notice values and behaviors espoused by our family members which we find hard to endure and they bring us great concern. It’s important to plan ahead to keep things as peaceful as possible. These 5 suggestions from Dr. Nicole Joseph, a licensed clinical psychologist may help.  
What’s a person to do?
1. Refrain form making always and never statements. You always put me down or you never listen to me. Do not re-hash the past; save it for another day.
2. Refrain discussing the big three: Politics, Money, and Religion.
3. Refrain from telling embarrassing stories about others.
4. Refrain from negative family gossip.
5. Refrain from discussion about eating or drinking habits.   Thanksgiving is often a day of excess. This is not the day to fix other people.
    Remember, as much as we love and need our family members, the only behaviors we can control or change are our own. Make sure your’s fosters connections.

What It Means To Be Family
By
Dr. Rachell N. Anderson
    In 1948, the United States declared the right to family as a human right and found it to be the most fundamental unit of social organization. Families provide the primary care and support for members of society from birth through old age. Family members understand themselves to be a part of that group and generally accept a degree of obligation to provide care for one another. It’s these people that Robert Frost may have had in mind when he wrote, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” As a member of the human family, they have to take you because you belong to them and you are one of them.
    So, family is primary for humans. The most obvious responsibilities for families are preserving and caring for children. This duty involves feeding, clothing, sheltering, teaching and keeping them from harm. Families are social institutions with their own histories, features, and functions and having their own goals and purposes. Families are valuable for what they can do for us, and for what they are and for what they contribute to our communities.
    However, there is no one picture that depicts all families. They come in many sizes, shapes, colors and configurations. They are expected to be a structure of love and trust. Even when these are absent, messages about how to be in relationships and in the world are forged by its members.     
    We get our identities from our families. Each of us is someone’s child, someone brother or sister and someone’s grandchild. Fragments of stories that parents, siblings, and other family members tell help children to build the narrative for their lives and construct their identities. As children acquire self awareness, revisions occur at about age 6 and they assume they are independent in their thoughts and beliefs. They develop that sense of self and incorporate or in opposition the narratives from family members. One feature that can’t be helped is family members encumber their children with a conception of how to treat and to think about others, for good of for ill.
    Families are expected to be places of love. Children need love just as much as they need food, clothing, and the other goods and services families provide. However, it is not a service like clean clothes, a hot bath or a dinner. Specific kinds of behaviors teach children how to develop interpersonal connection. This is a process for giving and receiving love that is designed to help children learn how to be in relationships with others.  When the child is an infant, the connection is one sided; the parents give and the child receives. But what they give is themselves. Children learn to give love by receiving it.  
    Family is where we get our morals. While adults are teaching children to walk, talk, eat and be civilized, they are also same teaching them how to see the world and also how to be in the world. In other words, how to make sense of life and your part in it. As a result, children learn their parents’ view on the world.  It may be full of both useful and useless materials. Parents can only teach what they know and are themselves a product of their world. If the messages are mixed with resentment, hate, intimidation, and misinformation about themselves and others, the child may have to unlearn some of the material to be acceptable and successful with their lives. This is where the idea (attributed to Socrates) that the “unexamined life is not worth living.” "The unexamined life" refers to a life lived by rote under the rules of others without examining whether or not one wants to live with those beliefs, feelings, behaviors or rules.
    Indeed, people are important in every aspect of out lives.  For better or worse, in good-enough families the sense of security that comes from knowing that we do not navigate this world alone is important. We need others. We value the ability to share our lives and our selves with others and find it tragic when people can’t do that.
    As we gather for Thanksgiving, an important family holiday in these parts, we often notice values and behaviors espoused by our family members which we find hard to endure and they bring us great concern. It’s important to plan ahead to keep things as peaceful as possible. These 5 suggestions from Dr. Nicole Joseph, a licensed clinical psychologist may help.  
What’s a person to do?
1. Refrain form making always and never statements. You always put me down or you never listen to me. Do not re-hash the past; save it for another day.
2. Refrain discussing the big three: Politics, Money, and Religion.
3. Refrain from telling embarrassing stories about others.
4. Refrain from negative family gossip.
5. Refrain from discussion about eating or drinking habits.   Thanksgiving is often a day of excess. This is not the day to fix other people.
    Remember, as much as we love and need our family members, the only behaviors we can control or change are our own. Make sure your’s fosters connections.

© Dr. Rachell N. Anderson, Psy. D.

  Dr. Rachell Anderson is a native of Tunica, a licensed Clinical Psychologist, a Professor Emeritus and author. She taught at the University of Illinois and ran a Private Clinical Practice in Springfield, Illinois for many years. She now lives in Tunica and writes with the Tunica Chapter of the Mississippi Writers Guild in Tunica, Mississippi. Check out her website at WWW.drrachellanderson.com for more articles and books.

Teaching The Truth With Compassion
By
Dr. Rachell N. Anderson

    People Lie. We all know that. Right? Although most of us will not admit to being one of them. Whether it’s to save ourselves or to lessen the harm to others, 1 out of every 5 of our interactions with others contain a lie. For the better part of every day, we are interacting with others. Trust and betrayal are the most important issues to arise between people and the majority of communication most we hear in our culture is criticisms, judgments and lies. Not many of us have learned truthfulness and sincerity, as ways to express ourselves and honor others without alienating them.
     As shocking as it sounds, kids lie too. Researchers found that children begin to lie as young as age 2, usually to conceal transgressions. Because they are not well developed cognitively, their lies are thin and they get caught. Evidence shows that most  parents actually favor punishing deception rather than rewarding truthfulness. Kids become increasingly more sophisticated at  lying as they get older. By late childhood it is almost impossible for adults to tell if a kid is lying or telling the truth.
    Meanwhile, most of us agree that trust is an essential foundation to a life of civility. Lying erodes trust. We espouse beliefs such as "Honesty is the best policy", "The truth will set you free", “Above all, to thine own self be true, then you can’t be false to any man.” But, we aren’t very good at doing what we believe to be the right thing.
     In a civilized world, honesty and compassion must go hand in hand. Honesty is the complement to caring and compassion. Because of how powerful compassion is at creating connection sometimes compassion is given priority over honesty. That’s one of the reasons some people use to justify using what they call Little White Lies. Honesty is important regardless. Without the honesty noone can really be understood.
    To help parents teach useful skills, B.F. Skinner developed the concept and child developmental professional have advised parents to try to ignore children's bad behavior and reward their good behavior. Positive reinforcement amounted to Catching kids doing good and paying attention to that. Negative reinforcement is more like intimidation, threats and punishment. In other words, positive actions are more effective than negative ones and better results. For most parents, that seems counter-productive. Many think ignoring is the same as tolerating and it seems like they are failing to do their duty as parents. Most ignore the advise and punish anyway.  
    To test the effectiveness of this idea, a team of psychological scientists from Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies worked with groups of kids ages 3-7 to see if just a brief, but engaging exposure to moral instruction tempered kids’ natural deceptiveness. They designed an elaborate experiment in which 3- to 7-year-olds were given a fairly irresistible opportunity to cheat in a game, and then were asked whether or not they had cheated. In the experimental group one of three stories; Pinocchio, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and George Washington and the Cherry Tree were read to the kids. Kids in the control group heard The Hare and the Tortoise, which does not deal with honesty or lying.

and if any of the three stories was more effective than the others.
 with an honesty test, But before the honesty test, each of the kids heard a reading of one of the three stories.. Then used three morality tales to instruct them about morality in an abstract way and also to shape their moral behavior. The results were intriguing—and unexpected. As reported
    Both approaches can motivate and sustain performance
    The scientists predicted that all three of these stories would be effective in promoting honesty in kids. .    The results were intriguing—and unexpected. As reported in an article to appear in the journal Psychological Science, both Pinocchio and The Boy Who Cried Wolf failed to moderate the kids’ tendency to lie about their own transgressions.  Only George Washington and the Cherry Tree significantly increased the likelihood that the cheating kids would tell on themselves—and this effect was found regardless of age.
    So why would these classic tales of lying and consequences not do their job? Well, the scientists suspected that it might be the nature of the consequences. Both Pinocchio and the shepherd boy experience very negative consequences as a result of their dishonesty—public humiliation in one case, a violent death in the other. Young George’s story, by contrast, emphasizes the virtue of honesty and sends the message that truth telling leads to positive consequences. Lee and colleagues ran another experiment to These results taken together suggest the opposite—that emphasizing the positive value of honesty is more effective than accentuating the negative.

Dr. Rachell Anderson is a licensed Clinical Psychologist, a Professor Emeritus and author. She taught at the University of Illinois and ran a private Clinical in Springfield, Illinois for more than 40 years. She now lives in Tunica, Mississippi and writes with the Tunica Chapter of the Mississippi Writers Guild. Check out her website at WWW.drrachellanderson.com for more articles and books she has written.