The Handwriting Association of Nigeria and Diaspora has called on the Federal Ministry of Education and other policy makers in the nation’s education sector to return handwriting and make  it a core  subject in the country’s educational curriculum, especially at the primary and secondary school levels.
The president of the group Dr Wale Williams made the call while speaking at the closing ceremony  of the 2019  Handwriting Summit held in Port Harcourt recently, adding that poor handwriting by pupils and students  was responsible  for failures in examinations.
Dr Williams opined that the only  way to contribute in the development of the nation’s education sector was to ensure that handwriting is made a compulsory subject both in primary and secondary schools, adding that the use of computer and smart phones had caused serious negative effects on the youths, especially in hand writing.
“One of the  ways  to contribute in impacting the educational sector is to ensure that there is the consciousness to decent written expression called handwriting. Smart phones have brought about rapid use of abbreviations which many students today carry to write examination .making them think they are still writing to their friends out there while in examination hall,” he stated.
Also speaking, the president of the National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools (NAPPS) in the Rivers State, Dr Roberta Dosunmu disclosed that hand writing was made a compulsory subject in the past and added that such policy was why some of them knew how to write well.
She commended the association for championing  the campaign for the reintroduction of handwriting in the school curriculum, adding that it was necessary to teach children how to write very well so that their work could be read and attract marks to them appropriately in order to avert failure in examinations.