Making students write by hand would improve their learning

This is a fairly ableist argument. I'm dyspraxic. I was diagnosed in year 9 ar school and when straight from the bottom of the year to top of the year, almost overnight on being allowed to use an early iteration of what would become a laptop computer in class and in my exams. Funnily enough, I do still handwrite more than most people. And for exactly the reasons stated here: I hand write *because* is more effort it requires me to focus more, and so my brain wanders off less (although I'd never draft a long piece by hand). However there is a difference between doing something that required extra cognitive load when there is cognitive load to spare (making notes on something you at least vaguely understand already), and requiring extra cognitive load when you are already operating at 100%.

There is no empirical or historical evidence for this view. Far more handwriting is copying and repeating than creating. The great "writers" of antiquity, in fact, could not write; they dictated to slaves who wrote down their words. This is ideology, not education.

There is no history there. I write as a historian of literacy.