this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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At least in early years education I know they’re being taught them.
As for primary aged children, we should be directing our energy into ensuring they have a wide range of opportunities to do so instead of bemoaning the lost importance of written writing.
But from what I understand, primary is trialling ECE play based learning ideas so I don’t see why they would be doing less of it?
They’re doing much, much less of it at home…which means that there are a lot of kids coming into primary school with already extant skill gaps. That’s WHY they’re trialling ECE stuff for slightly older kids - because the kids haven’t learned it yet, when they should have.
How much handwriting do you expect children to be doing at home? If parents aren’t enabling their children to do arts and crafts etc, they’re not have going to been getting them to do writing either.
Also the ECE stuff isn’t about not learning such and such skill, it’s about teaching methodology. Going from a top-down teacher knows best approach to one that focuses on fostering children’s innate desire to learn. It’s less rote and more autonomy based teaching.
When I say “they’re not doing it at home” I was referring to fine motor skills in general. Because they’re not drawing, not crafting, not playing with the tactile stuff as much.
They come in behind on fine motor generally. Writing is a consistent, every day activity - right from the absolute basics of the alphabet or number recognition and learning to spell/write their own name - that strengthens fine motor skills. If we take writing away as a daily thing, we’re going to struggle to come up with an equivalent activity that can be done as frequently, by as many children, in as many different settings, as writing is.