In addition to the increased use of technology to complete schoolwork in recent years, there has also been a decreased use of pencils for the completion of work that doesn’t rely on technology, and it is something that I have never understood. I can still remember the thrill of being allowed to use a pen for the first time, and I saw with my students that that thrill has not diminished in recent years, even though they were even more excited whenever they got to complete their work using computers. I thought that was all well and good, and I shared their excitement, until they got a little older and I noticed them using pencil less and less frequently, even when it would have been a better choice than using a pen or working on a computer would have been. Though both of those options are accepted and expected more and more as you move through the grades, I would be very surprised to learn that any teacher would outright ban the use of pencils in every circumstance. Though pencils will never again have as big a role in school as they once did ( and pens won’t, either), I don’t believe that pencils should ever be abandoned completely. As with so many other study skills, decisions about when and where to use a pencil should be made with an eye toward the benefit they can provide in certain instances, based on what you feel you need to do to give yourself the greatest chance of success, and the more able you are to make those decisions for yourself, the better off you’ll be.
The one instance where I would wish that the majority of you would consider continuing to use a pencil is in math, particularly when you need to show your work. I still remember being told from the first that though we would be allowed to use pen in every other subject, we would not be allowed to do so in math. Even though I grew up in the era when erasable pens were popular, the rule always was that pens were for writing, while pencils were for math, and this was a rule I continued to follow all the way through college. As I have stated many times before, reading and writing are my strongest subjects. Though math is not my weakest subject, and there were certain parts of math in which I actually did quite well, much of it did not come naturally to me. The realization that any success I had in math would only come through hard work happened very early on, when pencil was still required, so it never even occurred to me to abandon it in later years. I can’t even say for sure that I ever had classmates who abandoned it, because I don’t remember seeing it happen and I’m not sure I would have noticed if it had. This only caused me to be even more shocked to see my students use pen for math than I otherwise would have been, especially because by this point, erasable pens had fallen out of favor because of their propensity to leave smudges on the page. I would try to insist to my students not only that their math work would be neater if they did it in pencil, but also that their teachers would prefer it, and perhaps nothing about the use of pen for math shocked me more than the fact that I never heard from teachers that I needed to insist that my students use pencil. This did not stop me from requiring that any student whose math work I would be grading use pencil, and to their credit, none of them ever questioned me about it. Though it may be old-fashioned, uncool, and no longer required or even recommended by your teachers, using pencil for math is still a great study skill to consider, because the neater you are able to make your math work, the easier it will be not just to complete it and correct any errors you may make as you do so, but also to review it in preparation for tests.
Another place where using pencil may well be beneficial is in brainstorming ideas for writing. Obviously, if outlines, graphic organizers and/or drafts are required to be written in pen or typed to be turned in for credit, you need to honor that, but if you are someone who finds coming up with ideas and putting them in the right place difficult, brainstorming with pencil first is a great way to write whatever comes into your head before rearranging and improving it. When it comes to creative writing, completing a first draft in pencil is not a terrible thing, even if you will have to copy it over in pen or type it before turning it in. It might help your ideas to flow more freely, and they might not even need to be organized at first. It is also a good idea to consider writing a first draft, whether in pencil or pen, if you are someone who writes faster than you type, as I am. Though I do type my blog posts without writing them out first, I still write stories in notebooks, in pencil, and in cursive, because my ideas come so fast sometimes that I fear I will forget half of what I want to say before I am able to type it, and because pencil makes it much easier to edit what I write so I am still able to go back and read it. In a future post, I will defend my use of cursive just as I am defending my use of a pencil, but suffice to say that using a pencil before using a pen or typing when writing can be just as valuable as using it instead of a pen when doing math can be.
Though math is the most obvious subject in which using a pencil may be beneficial, and using pencil at the beginning of writing assignments may be beneficial if it suits your style, just about every subject includes situations where using a pencil may be helpful. Science labs and diagrams, maps in social studies, and sketching, not only in art, but in just about any subject where drawing is made part of an assignment, are all examples of times when you may wish to have a pencil with you. Carrying more than one pencil and having extra erasers and/or a sharpener with you as well is a good way to make sure you are prepared whenever you want or need to use a pencil, and having these same items in your study space at home is a good way to keep from always needing to carry them back and forth. No matter how reliant you have become on technology, and no matter how much you may prefer pen to pencil when you are not using technology, a pencil is still an important tool of the student trade, and abandoning it completely should not be taken lightly.
Despite advances in technology that allow you to do more and more of your work using it, and your advancement through the grades making you more and more reliant on using a pen whenever you are not using technology, a pencil is still an important tool to use as you work to improve your study skills. Whether to show your work and correct your mistakes in math, to start writing assignments in a way that allows your ideas to flow freely and be edited as necessary, or to be prepared at any time in any subject to complete assignments that will be done both more neatly and more legibly if a pencil is used, now is not the time to abandon the pencil, tempting though it may be to do so. Instead, as I say about so many other things, use a pencil at the times and in the ways that work best for you.