First of two parts
IN an age of instant search and frictionless revision, writing can become less about thinking and more about performing. A student types a paragraph, adjusts a tone with a thesaurus and pastes in information gathered from screens. The result may look polished, but too often it reveals little about what the student truly understands, what they can argue or how they arrived at their conclusions.
The European education systems that lead in literacy and pedagogy face a familiar challenge: how to preserve the depth of learning — especially critical thinking — when the easiest route to “good writing” is no longer cognitive effort. What they have done could offer us best practices that we can follow, faced as we are with the dismal results in global assessments on the reading, mathematics and critical-thinking skills and critical-thinking skills of our students.
I will argue for a renewed emphasis on four connected practices: handwriting, writing in class, oral recitation and non‑analog ways of learning. The goal is not nostalgia for paper over pixels. It is a deliberate strategy to build intellectual resilience: students who can read closely, write carefully, speak clearly and reason independently — without outsourcing their thinking to a search engine or an artificial intelligence tool.
Handwriting is often treated as quaint or mechanical, but it is also cognitive training. Physically forming letters engages working memory and attention. Even when the lesson is the same — say, learning vocabulary or composing a short argument — the medium matters because the body participates in the learning process.
In good practice, handwriting is not “just drills.” It is used as a low-tech way to slow down thinking. For instance, a teacher might have students write a short “evidence paragraph” by hand after reading a source. Or they can do brainstorming or free writing before they make a handwritten outline. This, in turn, will be used for drafting the final version.
The students can also keep a reading journal in which they must enter quotes and brief interpretations in their own words. Or what we did in the Department of English at Ateneo de Manila University, when I was a new teacher in 1986; we asked students to keep a journal every day, not graded, but just an outpouring of their ideas and feelings. It was not meant to be for public consumption. The teacher just read it, put a check and returned it to the students. The point is to let the students know that compiling ideas together and putting them to paper isn’t hard to do.
In Finland, where literacy is strongly valued, schools often emphasize meaningful writing routines rather than purely exam-oriented tasks. Elsewhere in Europe, many teachers have adopted “slow writing” practices: doing the first draft by hand so that students cannot rely on autocorrect, templates or easy copy-paste. The effect is often noticeable: Students write more cautiously, quote more accurately and show clearer reasoning.
This is what we do now in my classes on creative writing at the University of the Philippines in Cebu. There are no midterm or final exams, but pieces of creative writing. The first paper is an impression paper on the paintings, mixed-media work and sculptures found at the Joya Art Gallery. We began by a discussion on colors and their emotional meanings. We followed it up with a short lecture on texture and tones, foreground and background. Then we went to the art gallery, and I pointed out specific parts of the work, without telling them my impressions about it.
The second paper is one about the images found in the film “Jose Rizal,” directed by the late National Artist Marilou Diaz Abaya. I was the script consultant for this film, and my assignment was to trawl for images that could be used for the movie. Rizal was a poet who wrote two novels, and this pristine quality of poetry could be found in his work. I was assigned to look for them and include them in the screenplay.
Thus, handwritten work matters more than ever in our 21st-century classes. International evidence aligns with this intuition. In settings where handwritten composition remains central — such as certain East Asian educational contexts emphasizing careful note-taking and revision — students frequently perform well in text structure and sustained recall. The point is not to imitate every system, but to recognize that writing by hand can strengthen the link between attention, memory and comprehension.
What does science say?
Scientists have confirmed that handwriting engages the brain in significantly more extensive and dynamic neural activity than typing. A new neuroscience study reported by the Institute of Clinical Nutrition and Sciences shows that writing by hand lights up the brain far more intensely than typing. It creates rich, widespread connectivity across regions linked to memory, attention and learning. In contrast, keyboards behave like that one friend who only replies “OK” — efficient, but not exactly stimulating.
Moreover, electroencephalogram scans revealed that handwriting boosts synchronized brain activity in theta and alpha waves, especially in areas tied to sensory-motor control and memory formation. Typing, meanwhile, activates fewer and more limited networks. Researchers say the fine motor chaos of forming letters forces the brain to coordinate vision, movement and thought all at once.
Beside my bed is a low table where I have placed several books. Last night, I saw my four books published by Penguin Random House Southeast Asia. They were piled one on top of another: the novels “Riverrun” and “Boys’ Love,” and the book of stories called “The Heart of Summer.” There was also a copy of my latest book, “Landscapes of Feeling,” which just arrived yesterday.
I scanned them and noticed that “Riverrun,” which I mostly wrote by longhand at Hawthornden Castle in Scotland or produced on an Olympia manual typewriter, was more literary, the words more thought out and cadenced. Some of the essays in “Landscapes of Feeling” were also written by hand or typed manually more than 20 years ago. They also seemed more rounded, like rice grains that have been fully cooked.
To be concluded on Oct. 17, 2026
The books of Danton Remoto are available at National Bookstore, Fully Booked, Shopee, Lazada, Central Books website and www.acrephils.com; Kinokuniya in Asia; Amazon and independent bookstores globally.