“The human spirit must prevail over technology,” said Albert Einstein. The formative years of schooling should help our children to acquire basic skills of writing.
Excessive use of technology especially smartphone, tablet, laptop etc. should not create over dependence in our children making them ill-equipped for basic skills like writing.
Famous contemporary linguist Noam Chomsky is of the opinion that the capacity for languages is activated largely through the child's interaction with the native and immediate environment. He sees language development in the child as a separate aspect of knowledge, apart from the rest of cognition or mental functioning.
As we know there are three main domains of learning. They are cognitive (thinking); affective (emotion/feeling) and psychomotor (physical/kinesthetic) .
However, overuse of digital technology has affected the process of acquiring competent writing skills. Most of our children have given up both the writing practice and also referring at dictionary to check spellings, to search more synonyms and antonyms for a word at hand while writing.
It is time for the parents to introspect themselves by asking are we disabling our children by exposing or giving unrestricted access to smart phones and tablets and thereby hampering the process of acquiring the basic skills of holding the pencil.
Failure in developing these fine motor skills may push our children to face difficulties in final summative tests which demands manual writing skills. Except a few online tests still we are depending on the manual written exam to decide the fate of our children. Lack of effective writing skills should not go against them to plan their future.
As part of preparing the children to hold a pencil or pen, parents should provide more opportunities to children at home to develop their basic motor skills. For instance asking them to arrange their own things in the cupboard, encouraging them to wash their plates and tumblers after food, involve them in cutting vegetables, ask them to carry light weight goods etc. to develop the skill of holding things firmly and steadily.
It is also equally important for both teachers and parents to encourage children to write, draw, and paint freely using chalk, crayons, pencil etc. to strengthen their motor skills in the formative years of schooling.
