Forgetting your character

During the past exam season, writing test scores have fallen for the 4th consecutive year.

With an increasing dependence on computers and mobile devices, school children are forgetting how to write as technology allows them to simply recognize and choose the character they want to use – rather than writing it stroke by stroke.

Having spoken to a teacher at the HongQiao International School where many Chinese kids are being sent to, there is a sense amongst the teaching staff that by secondary school, many school children are still a primary school level when it comes to writing Chinese characters free-hand.

“School children no longer practice writing their characters with a pen and piece of paper. They’re always chatting online.”

“With so many post-80s kids never cooking Chinese and the post-90s kids forgetting how to write Chinese, some parents are asking us to increases the amount of Chinese culture classes. They fear their kids are losing their Chinese character”

    This entry was posted on Saturday, August 28th, 2010 at 5:40 pm. It is filed under China, Culture, Technology, Text and tagged with . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

    One Response to “Forgetting your character”

    1. Hidi Huang says:
      August 31, 2010 at 8:51 am

      It’s another sad fact.
      Unlike English, typing Chinese by pingyin is so different from writing Chinese by character. That’s why young people are forgetting how to write when their lives are relying on computer.
      On the other side, I hope it may remind the current parents of the importance of Chinese when they regard English as an important skill where a lot of money and time are invested.
      I still remember when I was in school, people thought you could tell the person’s personality from the handwriting and if you had good handwriting, people immediately had a good impression of you.

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