Because graphology is concerned with the study of handwriting, its future is inextricably linked to the future of handwriting. We evaluate the current situation of handwriting in the United States, explain the positive function that handwriting plays in our lives, and investigate the handwriting-behavior relationship in this article. We also look at the state of graphology and offer suggestions on how to make it more generally recognized and used in the future.
Have you ever tried going a whole day without writing anything down? Do you reach for a keyboard or a pen or pencil every time you sign your name or scribble down a reminder note, a phone number, or other information? Even in this day and age of word processors and supercomputers, the vast majority of us would be unable to function for even one day without our pens and pencils.
Unfortunately, handwriting is degrading to the point where the majority of the population in the United States may soon lose the ability to write. The number of young people who can barely write has becoming increasingly alarming to me. When you ask most high school teachers how their students write these days, they’ll tell you that they can’t read their students’ work. According to my personal research, almost 75% of high school students have never learned the ability to write in a clear, fluid, and natural cursive style. Handwriting standards thirty years ago were significantly superior.
Let’s face it: teachers are overworked, and grading multiple-choice examinations takes less time than deciphering handwritten essays. Furthermore, many teachers believe that powerful typewriters and word computers have replaced the necessity for expert handwriting. It’s no surprise that the teacher’s attitude toward handwriting has evolved into, “We’ll get to handwriting later… if we have time.”
But there’s more going on here than just the importance of handwriting. The fact that our society is fixated on the tangible—numbers, machinery, and things we can actually touch and see—is at the foundation of the problem. Anything having to do with the mind or emotions does not appear to be important. In the United States, a student can complete elementary, junior high, and senior high school and get a college diploma without ever taking a psychology course. Is it possible that learning about the War of 1812 is more essential than learning about the psychological fact that violence breeds violence?
As a result, while the United States is the world’s most technologically advanced country, it also has the highest rate of violent crime and murder per capita. And when it comes to dealing with drug usage and violence towards one another, we are basically useless as a country. Yet, every day, more scientific evidence points to the mind’s critical involvement in all aspects of life. Doctors are learning, for example, that our attitudes and states of mind appear to have a significant impact on many physical disorders.
What Are the Benefits of Knowing How to Handwrite?
The brain directs the movement of the hand as we handwrite. This movement allows us to not only express our thoughts, but also to reveal our underlying emotions and even our physical status. These are the factors that graphologists consider, however the ability to write by hand has a number of extra advantages:
- Interaction with others – No other species has the power to express ideas and sentiments through written symbols at any time and from any location on the planet.
- Self-communication – Handwriting is still the quickest and most practical way to scribble down notes, reminders, messages, recipes, directions, phone numbers, and other important information.
- Identification – Handwriting is unique to each individual. Your signature and handwriting can be used to identify you without you having to be there (or needing to be alive, for that matter).
- Memory – Handwriting helps you recall facts better. According to studies, when someone writes things down by hand, their capacity to recall it improves considerably. Seeing the words while thinking and writing them helps to cement the information into memory more effectively than any other way.
- Goal achievement – Handwriting allows you to focus more successfully on your objectives. According to a Harvard University research, the 3% of graduates who wrote down their goals on a regular basis earned ten times more money than the 97 percent who did not.
- Physiology – Handwriting improves fine motor skills, according to physiology. People who can handwrite with ease have stronger fine motor abilities overall than those who have never learned to write, according to studies conducted all around the world. Handwriting exercises, which are taught in elementary schools, are the only regular activities that require fine motor skills.
- Autographs—Handwriting allows us to obtain and treasure a one-of-a-kind piece of our idols. This is something that humans have done for millennia.
- Graffiti-Though graffiti is often unsightly and offensive and defaces public property, it has existed throughout the ages in every corner of the world. And without it, public bathrooms would be dull.
To fully reap the benefits of handwriting, we must place a greater focus on handwriting instruction in our schools. Writing should be enjoyable. Children enjoy art courses, and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t enjoy handwriting classes as well. When we offer our children huge pencils with no erasers and paper with extra-wide lines, however, we make it harder for them to enjoy handwriting. The writing process is made unpleasant, tedious, and certainly not enjoyable by these onerous instruments. There’s no reason why kids shouldn’t learn to write on lined paper using regular-sized pencils and erasers.
Researchers from the University of California and Harvard University recently published a series of remarkable studies showing that when a person is forced to execute a specific physical exercise, his brain undergoes a chemical alteration, which has a psychological effect. Endorphins and other hormones were released in the body when individuals were encouraged to grin for various amounts of time, according to one study, and the subjects’ moods were lifted, they were more relaxed, and their immune systems were strengthened.
As a result, may a country’s writing system, which young children use every day, have an impact on the country’s overall behavior? Could the act of producing specific graphological movements be a key to a society’s passing on of these traits? Examining several writing systems and their possible links to national behavior could be fascinating.
The British have always taught their children to write vertically, whereas the Americans have always taught their youngsters to write horizontally. And, as a stereotype, aren’t the British a little more reserved, a little less likely to show their true feelings to others? Aren’t Americans more forthright with their thoughts and feelings? Is there a link between the two? The British encourage their pupils to sit up straight and use self-control in their writing activities, whereas the American system allows us to dive directly into the emotion.
The old German writing system, which was popular until the 1940s, was practically entirely angular in design. German children were taught motions that were abrupt, angular, and sharp, similar to the Nazi goose-step marching style. Would you not become a more aggressive, hostile, and unyielding person if you were trained to use only sharp or angular hand and arm movements in your handwriting? Remember that time you attempted to write in an angular style? The typical German stereotype is that of a stern, emotionless, no-nonsense, unyielding individual. Is there a link between what you physically practice doing in your writing and who you become?
Germany’s writing style changed dramatically after Hitler’s death. It shifted to a more round, Western form of writing, abandoning the more angular style. The Berlin Wall was recently torn down by the first generation to master the new writing system.
