Skip to main content

Are typing skills more important than handwriting lessons? Finland says yes

How important is it that we teach our kids how to communicate using ink and paper? These days, typing away at a keyboard or a mobile smartphone is a much more common way of getting a message across, and in light of these new modern modes of communication, Finland has decided to remove cursive handwriting as a compulsory part of its school curriculum.

Instead, students will be taught keyboard typing and even texting skills. While these are undoubtedly useful in today’s jobs market — a faster typer is a more efficient  worker, after all — many will be sad to see handwriting cut out altogether. The changes will be introduced at the start of the fall term in 2016, and individual schools can still teach cursive handwriting if they wish to.

Recommended Videos

The teachers that the Savon Sanomat newspaper spoke to said that children would benefit from the changes to the curriculum, and that attention would be paid to those kids who may not have access to the same kind of modern-day gadgetry at home as their peers. Minna Harmanen, of Finland’s National Board of Education, said that fluent typing was an important “civic skill” that every child should learn.

Finland is one of the first countries to officially make handwriting lessons optional in favor of more time spent tapping away at keyboards, but it won’t be the last as we adapt to a different way of getting points across — the majority of schools in the U.S. have also voted to phase out cursive writing lessons. The question is, what will happen when a computer or tablet isn’t available and someone needs to leave a note?

[Header image courtesy of Zurijeta / Shutterstock.com]

David Nield
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Dave is a freelance journalist from Manchester in the north-west of England. He's been writing about technology since the…
Apple home hub: Here’s everything we know so far
An Apple HomePod 2023 on a media stand.

Apple’s smart home efforts have been pretty meager so far – there’s the Home app and the HomeKit platform … and, well, that’s about it. But that might all be about to change with the introduction of a couple of Apple-branded smart home devices that could transform how you operate in your home.

Right now, it looks like there are two products on the horizon: an iPad-like smart home hub that can be mounted in a dock or on a wall, and a smart screen attached to a moveable robotic arm. Neither are like anything Apple has developed before.

Read more
Better value bust up: 5080 vs. 5070 Ti
Nvidia RTX 5080 render

The Nvidia RTX 50-series is one of the most controversial graphics card launches in many years, but that doesn't stop the top cards being some of the best you can buy -- if you can find them at a fair price. Two of the top options worth considering are the RTX 5080 and 5070 Ti: two powerful GPUs with lots of fast memory, plenty of CUDA cores, and the latest generations of RT and tensor cores.

But how do these two cards stack up? With prices flying wild, here's how to nail down which graphics card is best for you.
Pricing and availability
Both the RTX 5080 and RTX 5070 Ti are technically available in that they have both been officially launched and have their recommended retail prices: $1,000 and $750, respectively. However, those aren't realistic, as third-parties control pricing for the 5070 Ti, and have vastly outstripped it; The ongoing Trump tariffs are driving prices higher across the board, too.

Read more
Microsoft just gave you a major reason to ditch Chrome
The Microsoft Edge browser on a flat surface.

Microsoft has introduced a new RAM control feature in Edge, allowing users to cap memory usage to prevent slowdowns. Now available in the stable version, this setting can be enabled in the browser's performance section, as reported by Windows Latest.

In the resource control panel, you'll see a slider that you can adjust to let Edge use as little as 1GB or as much as 31GB. You can set the cap to apply when gaming or at all times. You can adjust this setting anytime. If you put the slider all the way to the right, the Edge browser will show "no set limit," but if you move the slider anywhere else, a current limit will be displayed. The RAM control feature might not significantly improve your gaming experience, but every little bit helps.

Read more