On The Margins

Thursday March 31, 2005

[ Personal ] The Power of the Pen

A few months ago, my 6-year-old daughter Negin approached me with a sudden question "Daddy would you give me a promise?" The request fell well out of the usual routine of our conversations, and I was a bit confused. "Sure, sweetie—what is it?" I replied. "Would you promise to start writing a journal with a pen?" she asked. "You mean with a pen—a real pen, right? But why?" I said, quite puzzled with her request. "With a pen," she continued, "you can feel the words as you write them. On a type writer, you cannot feel them the same way."

Her reply was quite surprising to me. She has been writing, with a pen, for some time. Last night, in fact, was her first night showing any interest in "typing a letter" which she only started with a "Dear . . . " and left it there. With a pen, she does not stop that easily. The story goes on. I wondered, when she first pronounced her opinion a few months ago about the difference between the pen and the keyboard, whether she was simply bringing home a lesson learned at school? Was she discovering it through her own experience? I did ask her if they had discussed the difference between typing and writing with a pen at school. She replied negatively. That leaves me to conclude that she is just a very observing child. (This level of sensitivity and openness to experience is very typical of children of her age, I think.)

Of course, her question for me did not end there. It forced me to rethink the importance of the pen, the paper and free writing to our relationship with the words we put down. I have not worked out the whole thing but I hope to post, at least one short note, on the concept of "paper as technology" in a few days. The question of the pen vs. the typewriter brings only one of the many conceptual and phenomenological aspects to the foreground.

How we work with our hands and how the movements of our hands and fingers help adhere and integrate our experiences (whether it is leafing through a book or writing with a pen) to our memory and existence will play a key role in comprehending the real differences between digital writing and reading vs. the more dynamic and continuous interaction with the written or read words which the paper and the pen demand and make possible.

Paper, Pen, Writing, Children, Cognition, Digital, Learning.

2005-03-31 22:35:33.0 -- Comments [3] ; Permalink ; Trackback.