Handwriting versus digital writing: conflict or integration?

Abstract

For some years now, there has been a great debate between those who want to enhance handwriting and those who want to make it disappear in order to favour digital means that offer some more functional results. Digital writing is globally taking on a new and different meaning compared to when technological tools did not allow anything other than the use of the manual writing technique for the construction of written language: in this regard, is it possible to think of an integration between the two forms of writing, manual and digital? Abandoning handwriting could mean not recognizing how much it contributes to activating several cognitive processes of increasing complexity, which make it possible to keep alive basic neurocognitive, emotional and socio-communicative dynamisms deriving from its natural expression, such as enrichment of the vocabulary, mnemonic skills, reading comprehension, critical thinking. In the era of the “mythization of technology” (and remediation), the increasingly frequent use of the keyboard alongside – or at the expense of – pen and paper leads to an excessive simplification of the technical-instrumental skills. Consequently, various cognitive abilities are changing, with relevant effects on the learning and training processes in young and adult learners: the teaching of writing should not underestimate these properties of handwriting, which represent a synthesis of internal and external