A common good that we must not lose: writing. the natural pleasure of handwriting, telling one’s own experience

Abstract

Writing can be perceived as a basic common good, as it is an instrument of communication that represents a sociocultural foundation of the past and present history of humankind. In this article writing is considered both as a narrative tool, that allows to build the necessary forms – written indeed – of communication to interact with the world; and as a material tool that allows the permanence of the message as the result of a construct of graphic signs handwritten on a surface on which, in this way, the trace of the writer’s passage is destined to remain beyond the present time. After having retraced briefly the history of writing and having focused on writing as a tool by which we can tell the story both of the individual and of the civilizations, attention was focused on the possible relation between writing and thinking, because the first can’t be but the expression of an evolution of man’s cognitive structures and of his parallel neurological structures. Writing is tied to time (necessary to reflect and think) and is a man’s innate need, biological and cultural at the same time, not only to communicate, but also to know and to know oneself, and to live its implicit dynamism, creative and pleasant, as it is an important expressive form of the writing subject. In order to safeguard this last aspect in particular, it is important that the school takes into account the method by which it educates its first possible manifestations. Writing as a common good, therefore, must be taken into careful consideration by the pedagogical-educational methods in its process of teaching-learning. This is true especially nowadays, because the conformed digitalization of written communication risks replacing handwriting. The educational ideal would be an intelligent integration of these two forms of writing, without prevarication or substitution of one in place of the other.