Handwriting and motorcycles

Handwriting, or cursive to be exact, is dropping off of curriculum faster than Hollywood dropped Charlie Sheen. Many adults, especially office and tech oriented professionals, can’t remember the last time they hand-wrote anything, especially in cursive.

In the 1800s more public education began to emerge and more people were taught to read and write. In the mid 1800s however, cursive was introduced and popularized.
Also about this time in France (the 1860s to be exact), the first steam-powered motorcycles were being prototyped and built. Velocipedes as they were called, began to sprout up in America around 1868 and continued to evolve as the century went on.
The same happened with handwriting. Style and technique was perfected. Quills gave way to ink pens as the industrial revolution made manufacturing more available. So too did petrol-powered motorcycles begin to find their way into the ethos during the 1880s forward.
The first petrol-powered motorcycle to be called “motorrad” was the 1894 Hildebrand & Wolfmuller. English and American makers soon followed and the evolution had begun.

It’s funny how handwriting with a stylus thousands of years ago for commerce reasons has evolved to a skill that preschoolers learn. Tools for writing, like the stylus, evolved to the quill, then the ink pen, then the pencil, then again to a stylus (for smart screens), and finally to the keyboard. Similarly motorcycles have gone from steam to petrol, carburetion to fuel injection, and finally to electric means of propulsion.
So – like writing, has motorcycling seen its salad days come and go? It is well known that the common core curriculum standards that are replacing the old ways of teaching still advocate writing, they don’t mention cursive, which can be seen as a dated technological way of expressing letters. After all, if it’s so important, why doesn’t email, most literature, or the web use cursive font? And for motorcycles, why do we still need carbureted bikes, racing, and anything without the most exclusive of electronics packages?

Some scholars who are endeared to handwriting in cursive have moved the practice into the art department alongside calligraphy. That makes perfect sense to me. Just as it makes sense for motorcycles to continue to be rudimentary on some degree for learners and practitioners of the fine mechanical arts.

Studies done on handwriting have shown that people who take notes by hand consistently scored higher on tests than people who took notes by typing. There seems to be some sort of cognitive link between the hand and the brain when forced to write or create by hand. People also tend to be more creative and feel freer to deviate from a set format when they can use handwriting compared to typing. I also believe that when you learn to write your letters, it’s easier for your brain to learn the shape first by a sort of ‘mental muscular-memory’ rather than trying to memorize what the letter that your index finger presses in the second row looks like.
By this same logic it would make sense for beginning riders to first learn on non-fuel injected, non-abs or non-traction control equipped bikes in order to learn what is capable and not capable by the human interaction with the bike. Then, like typing, you can refine and add a new skill set to achieve the same outcome more effectively and efficiently.

So, as the doom-and-gloom set who love cursive leaches their concern into the public psyche, the same doom-and-gloom set for the motorcycling crowd is calling for an end to motorcycling by this same generation of current common core learners. Is the next generation really going to stop using inefficient means of communicating, expressing language, travelling, eating, etc? Some would have you think so. Many fear that the upcoming generations of humans will use more public transportation, focus more on reducing carbon footprints, living life in a cyber-based, connected, ELECTRIC world. Already text speak has made typing more efficient. And I’ve heard someone say that soon the phone/keyboard will go the way of the quill as more people integrate with wearable and HUD technology. What once was the greatest thing since sliced bread will be seen as about as valuable as a wallet-sized rock that you used to carry in your pocket.

We’re not sure when those days are coming, especially with the way electronics are changing the way that people are “riding” and “driving” as well as “writing”, but perhaps when the day does come, former employees of pencil companies and motorcycle companies can stand side by side in the unemployment lines and talk about the good old days. Probably like the ploughmen and quill makers did generations ago.

-Cheers!