Technē and technology: young men, literacy and the facility to write

ABSTRACT

With the fetishisation of computer technologies in education, the older sense of technology as pertaining to skill, what the Greeks termed ‘technē’, seems to have slipped from view. Technology is generally equated with the object itself rather than the facility to use it. A skill such as writing, for example, is rarely considered a technology and yet it is a vital tool for communication that aids understanding. Writing is also a technology that is framed in particular ways in relation to boys and young men. With constant concerns over ‘boys’ literacy’, it is generally viewed as a ‘feminine’ activity. Drawing on interviews with a group of young men – all proficient writers reflecting on their schooling – this article examines their perspectives on writing and broader engagement with different technologies. In particular, it considers how writing by hand can promote forms of embodied cognition and the affordances this provides.

KEYWORDS:

• Technē
• handwriting
• technology
• boys’ literacy

Introduction

This article was prompted, in part, by an exchange with my son prior to him entering his final year of school. He asked me if we had any spare batteries as he wanted to strap them to the end of his pen. Confused by this request, I asked him why and he explained that weighting his pen in this way and using it leading up to his Higher School Certificate (HSC)¹ examinations would strengthen his wrist and so his capacity to write. Declan² had apparently heard about this from a friend at another school, a top selective high school in Sydney, Australia where this particular piece of technology was well known. Its effectiveness was a topic of some debate at the time on the Bored of Studies website, a student forum on the HSC and related topics.

We may easily dismiss this folly, but this pen is of interest for a number of reasons. First, it reminds us that the pen is a technological artefact with a particular socio-materiality. Second, we typically use technology to do something better, and that some technologies are better than others. Third, technologies are not simply mechanical processes but entail embodied capacities that extend and change the user: they are a technology of the self (Foucault 1988). Fourth, writing itself is a ‘technology’, a labour which alters human habits of thinking (Ong 1982, 95) and requires the user to deploy that artefact in skilful ways. It is these last two points that I want to develop in this paper, to focus on writing as technē, or the skill involved in the proficient use of artefacts. Many scholars, like Foucault, tend to collapse ‘technology’, ‘technique’ and ‘technē’ (Behrent 2013, 59), and in turn reduce these to questions of power either institutionally derived as technologies of power, or that enacted by individuals upon themselves as technologies of the self. While these different senses of technology have applicability here, of particular focus is technē in the way the Greeks understood the term to mean art, skill or ‘cunning of hand’ (Liddell and Scott 1996). Prior to a discussion of technē as it applies to the skill of handwriting, I begin by examining technology in its artefactual sense because the artefact in question, the battery pen, stands in such sharp contrast to the various digital technologies that now proliferate our world and which are so fetishised³ within education and society more broadly (Harvey 2003). I do this by exploring the use of computers and other technologies by a small group of high-performing young men during and after their schooling,⁴ before then considering their perspectives on handwriting and its role in their education.

Why young men and technology?

The increasing emphasis on girls’ education in Australia from the mid-1970s led to the improved results of girls and their increasing representation in traditionally ‘male subjects’ (Keddie 2009; Collins, Kenway, and McLeod 2000). This was achieved through the implementation of a series of key policies (Commonwealth Schools Commission 1975; 1984, 1987), a genealogy of which reveals changes within feminism and gender theory over this period (see for example, Keddie 2009). Initial reforms followed on the strength of the women’s movement during the 1960s and 1970s and what Keddie (2009, 22) refers to as ‘state support for feminism’, extending from the early 1970s to the 1980s. While promoting greater equity for girls and contributing to the aforementioned improvements in their academic achievement, particularly within STEM disciplines, the liberal feminism of this period is also critiqued for its tendency towards a binary construction of gender, homogenisation of difference (Yates 1998) and simplistic treatment of disadvantage (Yates 1997). Influenced by feminist post-structuralism, reforms in the late 1980s and 1990s sought to address these shortcomings giving greater recognition to the social construction of gender and the intersectional impact of factors such as class and ethnicity (Abbiss 2008). Yet, by this stage, there was a very different policy landscape. The individualising logic of neoliberalism was shifting emphasis away from equity funding of marginalised groups and this was coupled with a view that girls were now no longer disadvantaged, out-performing boys on a number of indicators (Teese et al. 1995). As a consequence, there emerged a concern that it was boys who were falling behind, especially in terms of literacy, and it was them that should be given attention (Hayes and Lingard 2003; Lingard 2003).

In 2002, an Australian Federal Parliamentary Enquiry into Boys’ Education was said to reveal gaps between boys’ and girls’ levels of achievement (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training 2002), an issue which did (Carr-Gregg 2004), and still does (Baker 2020a; Baker and Gladstone 2022; Donnelly 2022), receive considerable media attention. There were calls at the time for a rethink of ‘boys’ education’ in what was framed as ‘a crisis of masculinity’ (Sydney Morning Herald 2004). Mills, Martino, and Lingard (2007, 6–8) viewed such hyperbole, stemming from the Enquiry, as a moral panic in which boys were cast as the ‘new disadvantaged’ in a form of ‘backlash politics’ that saw feminism and its critique of traditional gender roles as contributing to this so-called disparity in achievement. The extent to which gender intersects with factors such as class or ethnicity, which had come to be considered within girls’ education policy, was given little consideration in the Enquiry, and so, this perceived underachievement was viewed as an issue for ‘all boys’ (Mills, Martino, and Lingard 2007). Such a perspective was exacerbated by the tendency of the Enquiry to eschew academic expertise, particularly in relation to gender theory, and especially that of a post-structuralist orientation, favouring instead a ‘common-sense’ approach that aligned with the conservative politics that had prompted the Enquiry (Mills, Martino, and Lingard 2007) in the first place. A ‘boys’ education problem’ emerged, grounded in an essentialised masculinity, leading to approaches that specifically targeted boys and how they learn. This spawned an industry of cognate responses in the form of books, videos and websites targeting teachers and parents on how best to cater for boys and improve their performance at school. Books such as, ‘Boy Oh Boy: How to Raise and Educate a Son’ (Hawkes 2001), ‘What is the Matter with Boys?’ (West 2002), and ‘Boys in Schools: Addressing the Real Issues’ (Browne and Fletcher 2003) – what Mills (2003) termed ‘backlash blockbusters’ – typify the marketing blitz of this time, whose authors were fashioned as experts on the topic, many of whom developed strong media profiles that cemented the confected ‘crisis’ within the social imagination. Central to this emerging ‘common-sense’ was the idea that (despite the earlier historical dominance of boys in the area) English broadly, and writing in particular, were ‘girls subjects’, catering to a feminine creativity against the hard masculine sciences (Martino 1997).

Sandretto and Nairn (2019) refer to a similar situation in New Zealand that is still having an impact today. They are critical of the pervasiveness of this discourse of crisis within parenting guides on raising boys, many of which appeared not long after their prominence in Australia, pedalling a similar essentialism that could ‘do more harm than good’ (Sandretto and Nairn 2019, 329). The ongoing legacy of this perceived ‘boy problem’ in New Zealand, and the need to tailor education to meet their needs, is evident in the Ministry of Education’s (Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga) Success for Boys website. While indicating on its home page that the Ministry ‘is focused on lifting the engagement and achievement of all young people’ (New Zealand Ministry of Education 2021), the website’s exclusive focus is boys’ education, reinforcing a gender determinism in relation to teaching and learning. There appears no equivalent emphasis on boys’ education by any of the state-based education systems in Australia, though the New South Wales Department of Education still retains a page on its website on ‘Ten Tips to Help Boys Succeed at School’ (NSW Department of Education 2021), offering general advice about relationships, homework and other matters that would appear applicable to all students but is presented as specific to boys. Numerous factors do, of course, impact a child’s education. Gender, class, ethnicity, religion, individual family experience, among other influences, combine in various ways affecting how a child learns. Singling out any one of these and failing to consider their intersectional nature is misguided. Above all, teaching needs to meet the needs of each and every student while, at the same time, recognising and addressing the impact of social factors that affect educational outcomes. As indicated, trends certainly emerge which suggest girls, on average, are outperforming boys in areas such as writing (Baker 2020a; Baker and Gladstone 2022; Donnelly 2022) but girls’ improved performance in non-traditionally female subjects is a function of countering normative assumptions about gender, not reinforcing them, as occurs with some approaches to boys’ education. In such cases, essentialised conceptions of gender detract from what needs to be given emphasis, namely the knowledge and skills upon which successful learning depends and the appropriate pedagogy to attain these.

An example of such a problematic approach to improving boys’ performance at school can be found in that advocated by two of the leading exponents of ‘boy friendly’ education in Australia: the educational psychologist, Michael Carr-Gregg and the former principal of Sydney’s prestigious King’s School for boys, Tim Hawkes. In a newspaper article following the Australian Parliamentary Enquiry, Carr-Gregg (2004) warned that, ‘the educational system is not adequately recognising the distinctive needs of boys’. He offered a list of ten measures that schools could take to address these and encouraged parents to lobby their son’s school principal to adopt them. The list is a combination of some ideas that may be of use for boys and girls alike, others seemingly grounded in a pseudo-science of negligible benefit and still others that are simply educationally unsound. There is not the space here to consider this list in any detail but one measure in particular warrants discussion as a precursor to the examination of technology that follows and a second to illustrate how bizarre some of this advice actually was. In the latter case, Carr-Gregg (2004) declared that ‘classrooms should be less bright’ as ‘some researchers argue that more subdued lighting results in more settled behaviour by both girls and boys and creates an atmosphere in which boys are more able to talk about their feelings and discuss difficult issues’. To reduce what may be complex behavioural issues to a matter of lighting seems remarkably facile especially when there may be valid reasons for bright lighting, such as to aid students’ vision or even to lift spirits. More worrying, however, is the advice that ‘More use should be made of information technologies in the teaching of boys’ with the justification that, ‘Dr Tim Hawkes argues that boys learn best using graphs, charts and computer technology, yet education methods still rely heavily on essays and English assessment …’ (Carr-Gregg 2004). To improve boys’ educational performance, which must surely involve improving their literacy, Carr-Gregg and Hawkes appear to advocate a reduced emphasis on reading and writing, justifying their position in terms of a gendered essentialism around boy’s learning that frames any evidence of poor performance in terms of an over-emphasis on a supposedly feminised curriculum – essays and English assessment – as opposed to an assumed masculine affinity for graphs, charts and computer technology. The older analogue technologies of reading and writing are not only considered passé but a simplistic valorisation of computer technologies is conceived in gender-specific terms with their educative value seen as favouring boys.

The new boys’ education common-sense was, in some ways, a direct response to the feminist analysis of the gendered relations of schooling and technology. It has now become conventional wisdom, that technologies are deeply gendered, both symbolically (in terms of cultural meanings and values) and practically (in terms of gendered divisions of labour) (Wajcman 1991; Abbiss 2008). The insights of this scholarship, however, allowed for a perverse inversion of this equation in the boys’ education movement which rested, as we have seen, on a simple and essentialised binary of masculinity and femininity in contrast to the critical perspectives of feminist post-structuralism, leading to an obfuscation of complex issues around writing.

The power of technē

These complexities are considered below, particularly as they pertain to the notion of technē, but the relation between technē and power warrants some treatment here, namely, to unpack conceptions of power within literate practice. Discussions of issues around the relation between power and literacy too easily jump to a claim about the contribution of literacy to ‘power over’ or the reproduction of relations of power, understood in terms of broad social categories (like gender). Not enough time is spent on considering the relations between literacy in terms of ‘power to’ or the formation of capacities upon which literate practice depends. In a sense, these differing conceptions of power equate to Foucault’s notions of technologies of power and technologies of the self. As he explains in an oft-cited passage in ‘Discipline and Punish’ (Foucault 1977, 194),

We must cease once and for all to describe effects of power in negative terms, it ‘excludes’, it ‘represses’, it ’censors’, it ‘abstracts’, it ‘masks’, it ‘conceals’. In fact, power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth. The individual and the knowledge that maybe gleaned from him (sic) belong to this production.

And so, there is a productive dimension to power, not simply in terms of the (re)production of power relations but as forms of capacitation whereby power proves enabling, that is, as a technology of the self.

The notion of technē is central to such conceptions of power, as a crafting of the body which Foucault viewed as an ethics, instrumental to living a good life and providing the means by which individuals can interrogate the self and function as effective members of society, key concerns of his later work (Foucault 1991). Technē, then, operates as a power; a form of capacitation enabling literate practice. It is acquired skill, a product of learning and application, dependent on the requisite discipline. While not discussed in terms of technē, in his account of ‘body-object articulation’ in Discipline and Punish (Foucault 1977, 153), Foucault describes just such a process: ‘Over the whole surface of contact between the body and the object it handles, power is introduced, fastening them to one another. It constitutes a body-weapon, body-tool, body-machine complex’. This synthesis of body and object is integral to literate practice. It is the very essence of the technē upon which it depends, but which is often missing in debates about literacy, gender and differential achievement, overshadowed by the ‘quick fix’ of computer technologies.

A particular group of young men

Given what is perceived as an ongoing crisis in boys’ education, especially in relation to literacy and the role computer technologies may play in alleviating this, I was keen to pursue these issues, prompted, as indicated, by my son’s use of the battery pen. The object itself raises questions about the relationship between differing technologies – analogue and digital – within education, the technē involved in using them and the importance young men attach to their role in learning. The young men with whom I considered these issues were a small group who had attended my son’s school and a friend of my son’s from another school who had introduced him to the battery pen, all now aged in their twenties. This was, intentionally, a small study where the aim was not to produce a representative sample of ‘boys’ or ‘young men’ but to focus on a very particular group of young men, outliers in relation to popular perceptions of how boys learn and achieve in the study of English and writing. As a qualitative study with a purposive sample, it was very much in line with how Quinn Patton (2015, 52–53) characterises such work:

Qualitative enquiry typically focuses on relatively small samples, even single cases … selected purposefully to permit inquiry into, and understanding of, a phenomenon in depth … While one cannot generalise from single cases or very small samples, one can learn from them…

This was the aim here, though, as it was prompted by personal experience, it also took inspiration from C. Wright Mills (1973, 216) who explains how, ‘you must learn to use life experience in your intellectual work: continually to examine and interpret it’.

Unlike the ways in which boys and young men are usually characterised, as by Carr-Gregg and Hawkes, those in this study all excelled in English and were generally high achievers at school. The so-called ‘crisis’ in boys’ education had seemingly passed them by. Two had been dux⁵ of their year at their respective schools. All seven undertook English Advanced for the HSC, three had done Extension One English and two had done Extension Two; the top level of English requiring students to undertake an independent study. Two of these young men were also placed in the top five of the state for English Advanced. While one had a stronger focus on technology and science subjects, the remainder were mainly humanities students. Three of the seven had dropped maths which was not compulsory for the NSW HSC and two of the seven had chosen Software Design and Development in their suite of HSC subjects. Six of the group had attended an ethnically diverse boys’ comprehensive state high school in a middle-class suburb and one had attended a state selective co-educational high school which also had an ethnically diverse student population from mainly middle-class backgrounds. Both schools are located in Sydney. All seven were born in Australia, four were of Anglo backgrounds, one was Korean, one was Palestinian, and another was of Northern European background. This demographic detail is important, particularly in terms of the intersection of gender and class and how the latter clearly influenced these young men’s educational achievement and dispositions to writing, factors often neglected in the homogenising approach to gender within populist approaches to boys’ education. Equally it was chosen because, in the context of the current fetishising of technology both for boys’ literacy and schooling in general, focusing on boys who are educational achievers points to some critical insights into the value and use of new technologies. Data was drawn from a semi-structured focus group with six of these young men, one of whom was my son, and an interview with one other. Following each of these, the data was thematically coded focusing on the participants’ uses and attitudes towards computers and approaches to writing. The results of which are considered below.

Together with being high achievers and excelling in English, this group of young men was also of interest given their entry to high school coincided with the Federal Labor Government’s Digital Education Revolution (DER) (2008–2013) in which every child in Year 9 (aged 14/15 years) and above received a laptop computer with the aim of preparing them for ‘further education, training and to live and work in a digital world’ (Commonwealth of Australia 2011 para1). By the end of 2013, and after the distribution of over a million laptops to students nationally, responsibility for funding the program shifted to state governments that then introduced Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies, or similar, with parents shouldering the cost or, in cases of economic hardship, relying on laptops that schools could supply. By the time these young men had reached Year 9 and received their laptop loaded with $5,500 (AUD) of software, the DER was well underway and computer technologies were reshaping education in various ways with differential uptake and application across schools (Dalziel 2019; Park 2017).

Questioning the focus on ICTs in education

The DER, therefore, provided the backdrop to discussion with the group who were questioned about how they had used their school laptop, their perspectives on computers and other technologies in education and what they saw as their role in the lead-up to their HSC. Ned, one of the young men in the focus group, felt the laptops were,

pretty much a waste of money … I remember using it a lot when we first got them because it was a bit of a novelty. But then I wouldn’t even consider bringing it to school. I just didn’t see the point.

Josh, from the same school, commented that, ‘I can’t really remember actually doing work on the school laptop at school’ and Jacob, at the other school, simply felt that,

the whole laptop kind of roll-out passed me by pretty much. I found it was really slow, bulky and too many teachers didn’t use it … and so I didn’t bother bringing it every day. So, I just went back to pen and paper.

The others expressed similar views. With so much public money invested in this technology, framed as integral to these young men’s educational futures, it was surprising that they made little use of their laptops at school. There was, of course, the possibility that they were simply an aberrant group of adolescent luddites, yet this was far from the case. Each of these young men had an easy familiarity with computer technologies, inside and outside of school. In some respects, they were typical digital natives having been immersed in the technology from their earliest years. Home computers as desktops, laptops and tablets featured prominently in their lives outside school as did a wide range of mobile technologies. In particular, they used phones extensively, yet very rarely to make a call. Mostly they were used to SMS, check Instagram, Facebook and a range of other social media sites and at times to play games and to download music, news and images; use characteristic of their demographic (Richardson and Third 2009). Importantly, they also explained how they often used their phones at school during lessons. As Dennis commented, ‘I used it in class when I was looking up something I didn’t understand or when the teacher referenced something’. Some of the group had downloaded apps for specific purposes. Jacob, who had studied languages, had downloaded Google Translate and a Latin dictionary and Sam liked to download books from Amazon to read on his phone. Not all phone use in class is so educationally orientated. A 2018 Enquiry by the NSW Department of Education found many teachers felt they were an unnecessary distraction leading to policies restricting their use, particularly in primary schools (NSW Department of Education 2018).

But while these young men referred to an ease and familiarity with digital technology growing up, they appeared to make little use of computers at school. Despite what seemed like a lack of interest on their part and also dissatisfaction with the hard- and soft-ware that their schools had provided, their limited use of computers at school may also have been a result of a lack of integration in lessons by teachers. As John pointed out, ‘like IST or computer subjects obviously we used the computer but in other things History and English and stuff teachers didn’t really know how to use them’. Jacob expressed a similar view, ‘it just depended on the teacher and probably their age as well … it was not that anybody was resistant to technology but I think it is definitely a generational thing’. Prensky (2001), for example, makes a distinction between students as digital natives and their teachers who, as ‘digital immigrants’, lack technological know-how suggesting there may be greater use of computer technology by younger cohorts of teachers. Since making such claims, Bennett (2012, 215) explains that Prensky has tended to avoid such generalisations and points out that many studies actually show that ‘while there appear to be some age-related factors, diversity is often higher within age groups than between them’. Through further questioning, however, it became apparent that these young men found such a strong emphasis on computers was not really warranted in many of their subjects nor did they see them as especially beneficial in their learning. Ned, for example, pointed out that,

Well, I guess they are important for … researching things and putting things together. But I think, in terms of working ideas that you learn at school they are not as important. They are a useful tool but they are not as important as just regular classroom work. I mean computers have been a vehicle by which I can access information and do work, but I think if I did not have access to (computer) technology in high school I think the only effect it would have had would have been that I would have had to go to the library a lot more to collect information rather than just – I don’t think they are beneficial for education, in my view anyway.

This is an interesting perspective considering Ned was one of the young men who had studied Software Design and Development for his HSC and who, since leaving school, has pursued this area of study at university. Jacob also felt that,

at the heart of the matter is that you can get distracted a lot more by a computer. Nobody says … talks about like the bad effect of it in the classroom. So, I think that teachers recognise that, especially going into Years 11 and 12, there is an emphasis from people who aren’t involved in education on technology, thinking that it is a solve-all and that it will bring up our PISA test results or something … it’s safer and more streamlined not to use it, not to emphasise it.

Jacob’s views on the impact and utility of computer technologies in education correspond very much with the findings of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in their report, Students, Computers and Learning (OECD 2015, and 3–4) which indicates that there was,

no appreciable improvements in student achievement in reading, mathematics or science in the countries that had invested heavily in ICT for education … [with] students who use computers very frequently at school do[ing] a lot worse in most learning outcomes, even after accounting for social background and student demographics.

So, while these young men made considerable use of a range of digital technologies both inside and outside the classroom to assist them with their education, primarily accessing and sharing information, they didn’t see computers as being integral to their learning nor did it appear that this limited use had impeded their progress. They also seemed quite selective about when, where and how they used computers. Jacob, for example, was quite strict about social networking in his final years of school saying,

I did kind of block myself from [it] during periods when I was studying. Like I had a program which could just disable the internet which was helpful for me (otherwise) I would just waste hours of time looking at interesting Wikipedia pages.

While these young men may be digital natives in the sense that they demonstrate familiarity and ease in their use of digital technology, they did not conform to the approach to learning supposedly characteristic of digital natives. As Prensky (2001, 1–2), who coined the term, declares,

Today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors … They like to parallel process and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite. They prefer random access (like hypertext). They function best when networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards. They prefer games to serious work.

Some of this may be true, such as multi-tasking, though for Jacob and many of the others, when studying required concentration, multitasking was simply a distraction and a preference for games over ‘serious work’ was never voiced. A similar view is expressed by Bennet, Maton, and Kervin (2008, 779) who point out that there is ‘no evidence that multitasking is a new phenomenon exclusive to digital natives. Multitasking may not be as beneficial as it appears and can result in a loss of concentration and cognitive “overload” as the brain shifts between competing stimuli’. The main point here, however, is that these young men knew when to do what and had the capacity to discipline their use, something not all students possess, especially those who are far less independent learners and face difficulties, for example, with writing. In other words, technology cannot solve the problem of boys’ literacy, because the problem is not simply about boys, especially if that claim is based on reductive generalisations regarding gender. More importantly, however, these successful learners are suggesting that technology can get in the way of the development of deep and critical educational engagement for all learners.

Technē and the embodied skill of writing

It is questionable, therefore, whether the work and study habits that Prensky suggests are characteristic of digital natives – a term that, while somewhat debunked, still retains considerable currency (Bennett 2012, 213) – are, in fact, conducive to the kind of academic labour upon which educational success is premised. These young men didn’t seem to think so and their comments prompt a return to what the battery pen signifies about the idea of technology as technē, or embodied skill and understanding. Both Declan and Jacob had used the pen because they wanted to improve their facility with writing, to strengthen their wrist and grip and the mechanical process of transcribing text onto paper. Jacob explained that ‘the only way to stave off cramping and illegible handwriting is practice’. But neither Jacob nor Declan had used this technique to just increase their speed and resilience; it was a technique to acquire greater transparency in their use of technology. In his analysis of the ways technologies mediate the relation between self and the world, Ihde (1990) argues that it is crucial that the tool become ‘transparent’, absorbed into bodily action that allows the user to focus their attention on the task with greater dexterity rather than on the tool itself, a process he later termed ‘embodied technics’ (Ihde 2010) and which is similar to how Foucault discusses body-object articulation, the essence of technē. For these boys, such transparency of the pen allows them to concentrate far more effectively on what they were writing rather than simply how. The degree to which the battery pen enabled them to immerse themselves in their writing without the distraction of cramping, however, is debatable. Their use of the pen is not so much of note because of whether or not it worked, but more so because of what it represents; a technique to embody a particular skill which, outside their perhaps misguided preparation for the HSC, all these young men were engaging in anyway. All of them explained how they had made study notes prior to the HSC, which, significantly, were mainly handwritten rather than typed. The transparency of writing with a pen offers perceptual or cognitive pay-offs, as the broader work by Ihde and Ong suggest. The boys had various reasons for this. John explained that, ‘handwritten stuff … you just memorise it better’. Josh had a similar view, ‘usually I would go home and write up notes by hand because it gets stuck into your brain that way. But then I would type it up for a test or something’. Denis explained that,

I would write it and then type it … it gets into your head better. And I found typing you could often on a computer, you can get even a little distracted while you are using a computer so I tended to try and use – this is for myself – just writing without any distractions. I just feel more comfortable and it is just easier.

Jacob expressed a similar view,

I can get around retaining information a lot better for myself with a pen because you can highlight things and you can kind of circle things and write things in different colours which does seem a little bit more laborious on a computer like highlighting something and then right clicking and then finding the option that you want.

Sam also felt that writing aided memory:

The reason why it is easier … better because the brain is more of an active method of learning because you are not just pressing a button. You are thinking about what you’re writing with a pen rather than thinking about what letter you are going to press next.

Denis agreed: ‘I remembered it better and I remembered the context of it better if I wrote it down. Oh, for me personally I like handwriting because it just helps me get ideas out of my head’.

These young men’s preference for handwriting to think through ideas and retain information is reminiscent not only of the arguments of Ihde and Ong about the effects of technology on human perception and consciousness, but of Foucault’s comments in his lectures on the Hermeneutics of the Subject where he discusses how during the 1^st and 2^nd centuries AD ‘writing is increasingly affirmed as part of the exercise of the self’, adding that,

For simply by writing we absorb the thing itself we are thinking about. We help it to be established in the soul and we help it to be established in the body, to become a kind of habit for the body or at any rate a physical virtuality

(Foucault 2001, 359).

He explains, ‘It was a recommended custom to write after having read something and after having written it to read it again and necessarily to read it again out loud … ’ (Foucault 2001, 359). These young men employed a similar technē to absorb knowledge. This was not mindless rote, performed to simply retain information for an exam and then to summarily shed it, but a process of thinking things through to consider, embody and acquire knowledge with writing and, quite specifically, handwriting integral to this process. For these young men, typing did not seem to have the same effect. This is a view supported by Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014) who, in their study comparing the use of pen and paper to a laptop for notetaking with 300 students at Princeton and the University of California, Los Angeles, found memory and understanding of content was far better when notes were handwritten. Other studies with primary school-aged students report similar findings (Kongsgarden and Krumsvik 2016; Longcamp et al. 2008; Mangen and Balsvik 2016). Mangen (2016, 467), for example, accounts for such results in terms of the differing ‘sensorimotor contingencies’ of handwriting and typing and that with the former there is ‘simultaneous continual and current visual, motor and kinaesthetic feedback’ to the brain. This is similar to Sam’s point above. As he explains, with typing you are ‘just pressing a button’ whereas with handwriting the process of forming letters contributes to embodied cognition; the hand and its manipulation of the pen to form discrete letters, aids understanding. Sennett (2008) discusses a similar relation in his critique of the impact of computer-assisted drawing within architecture. He refers to a young Massachusetts Institute of Technology architect who explains how,

when you draw a site, when you put in the counter lines and the trees, it becomes ingrained in your mind. You come to know the site in a way that is not possible with the computer … You get to know a terrain by tracing and retracing it, not by letting the computer ‘regenerate’ it for you

(Sennett 2008, 40).

Such insights are significant in terms of the role of computer technologies in education and especially in relation to writing. Given the prevalence of voice, keyboards and touchpads to produce text, the teaching of handwriting no longer seems to be given the same emphasis as in the past (Watkins 2012; Watkins and Noble 2011). Australia’s National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is a case in point as it is currently in the process of moving its writing assessment online for students in Years 5, 7 and 9 with the use of a keyboard to replace pen and paper (Baker 2020b). While there has been some criticism of this move, it is mainly couched in terms of concerns about ‘fairness’ and ‘equity’ (Baker 2020b); that many students are yet to adequately master the required keyboarding skills to produce text. While, of course, there is an equity issue here, it is so much more. Such criticism not only needs to give far more weight to the importance of technē, the efficient use of the technology in question that is derived from the embodied skill achieved through practice, it also needs to consider the amenity of the different technologies of handwriting and typing and the affordances of each in relation to the development of cognitive capacities. This is of particular concern in the early stages of learning to write. As Mangen (2016, 468) explains, ‘In light of established knowledge about the close connections of motor action, perception and cognition, replacing handwriting with typewriting in beginning writing instruction seems, in many respects, ill advised’. Judging from the comments of the young men interviewed here and a growing body of research, it seems handwriting may have continued importance throughout one’s education with the use of a pen, once perfected, aiding comprehension in what can be a seamless transfer between thought and page, a technology of the self, allowing for the embodiment of understanding. Typing also has a role to play but, as with any technology, it is technē that needs to be foregrounded.

Conclusion

A stronger focus on handwriting seems pertinent for all students but, in light of the discussion about boys’ education, it should prompt a rethink about the blind faith that using computers can lift boys’ literacy outcomes as if the artefact itself possessed some magical quality without further investigation of which boys may be experiencing problems and for what reason. The young men considered here were clearly advantaged by their class background, though this is partly the point: namely, to correct the assumption that addressing educational inequalities can simply be understood in terms of gender binaries. Rather, intersectional analysis must be brought to bear on any theoretical or practical understanding of the function of technologies. But, more importantly, these young men were ‘successful’ learners: their insights should not be dismissed nor taken to mean that less successful learners need less successful techniques. The techniques these young men acquired, and used to significant effect, should be available to all. If education is about the redistribution of educational outcomes, it must also be about the redistribution of the capacities needed for diverse educational practices. Technology is an essential aspect, and by-product, of education. It mediates our relationship with the world and enables our capacity to act in it (Ihde 1990) fostering particular social and cognitive capacities (Ong 1982). This is also a relationship of labour, of hard physical and mental work that affords the facility of writing, which, in turn, reshapes the intellectual and embodied potentialities of the user. It is not, as Prensky might imply, a simple relation of access to information in the moment that we consume and discard at will. The lesson from the young men interviewed here, all of whom were high achievers at school and who excelled at writing, is that this is a deep relation. Information has to be embodied to be made knowledge and writing – by hand – can facilitate this. As Foucault states, it has to be ‘in the soul’ and ‘in the body’. Such a perspective does not negate the importance of digital technologies in education, but it should temper expectations of what their use can achieve. It is not the intent here to romanticise classrooms of the past, but the current valorisation of computers works against a deeper understanding of issues around technē, the skills required for proficient use. When coupled with the kind of gender essentialism that characterises much popular commentary on boys’ education, we do them – indeed all students – a disservice. We forget that some boys have developed powerful capacities in literacy and have done so without a reliance on computers. Indeed, the young men interviewed here were critical of such a fetish and understood that technē, the facility to write, was more important than the physical manifestation of technology. The practical lesson from this is that computers do not provide a simple mechanism for obtaining educational skills and, instead, attention should be given to technē and the hard labour that is needed for its acquisition.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The Higher School Certificate is the final school exams that students undertake in the state of New South Wales, Australia.

2. My son consented to the use of his name, but pseudonyms are used for each of the other young men referred to here.

3. Harvey (2003, 3) defines the process of fetishisation as ‘the habit humans have of endowing real or imagined objects or entities with self-contained, mysterious and even magical powers to move and shape the world in distinctive ways’. He explains that while technological changes are real, fetishisation occurs ‘because we endow technologies – mere things – with powers they do not have’. A similar use of the term is applied here in the sense that computers are often seen as a ‘solve all’ especially within education.

4. The research informing this article was conducted with the approval of the Western Sydney University Human Ethics Committee – Ethics Approval No. H14396.

5. Dux is the term used to refer to the top academically performing student in their final year of school or at each grade level.