What’s the most underrated life skill?
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I don’t know if this officially qualifies as an “underrated life skill,” but one skill I’m seeing on a rapid decline is written communication.
As an English teacher, I’ve been saying for years that students don’t read often enough and they don’t write enough. These two skills go hand-in-hand, and at the risk of sounding like an old man yelling at clouds, smartphones aren’t helping either. Hell, I’m guilty of this myself. Yeah, I read on my phone. And I even write blog posts like this one that you’re reading now. But the truth is, more often than not, I’m voice-dictating these posts into my phone and going back later to proofread and revise them.
Part of me sometimes wonders if my printing and handwriting skills are diminishing simply because of age. But our overreliance on technology certainly isn’t helping matters any. Over the last few months, I’ve noticed a stark correlation between my slipping penmanship and the fact that I just don’t write things out by hand anymore. At my school, all student coursework is online—we even stopped offering traditional, teacher-taught paper courses two years ago. When everything you do is typed or voice-dictated, you can literally feel the fine motor skills required to manipulate a writing instrument slipping away. Even my typing feels like it’s picked up more typos over time, like a specific cognitive muscle is getting a bit rusty. I don’t know the exact moment efficiency crosses the line into losing a vital mental muscle, but I have a sinking feeling I’ve already crossed it.
And if I can just stay down the “yelling at clouds” lane for just a moment: I had my students working on an “opener” activity today. They come into the classroom and tackle a quick question just to get them thinking. Sometimes we do them out loud; sometimes I have them write on a small dry-erase board or vote on the large whiteboard. But occasionally, I still have them write on actual paper with a pen or pencil. I did the latter today, and I even told the kids at one point, “If any of you write ‘IDK’ on your paper, I swear to God, I will start throwing pencils at you.”
Yeah, maybe that’s not the most appropriate thing for an educator to admit to saying. But as an English teacher, I believe reading and writing are two of the most important skills students will ever learn in a classroom, and those skills are fading fast. In fact, I think they’re diminishing at a much faster rate than any of us realize.
A quick note for Wednesday: After four weeks away, Rebuilding Rob: The Podcast returns with a special, unsegmented episode titled “Too Dumb to Quit”. It’s a heavy one, and it’s raw, but it’s the truth of what comes next. See you then.
Rebuilding a life takes grit, consistency, and a lot of ‘Option C’ thinking. Having crossed the 1,000-day milestone, I’m now charting the territory beyond. The mission remains the same: No glitz. Just the work. New to the blog? Start your journey here to see the blueprint and the ‘Tricorder’ perspective behind the rebuild.
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The article “the pen is still mightier than the smartphone” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob
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