Whether we’re talking about a pencil, a lead pencil, a mechanical pencil or a pen, this tool is on the way out. If you’re over 40, you would never have believed this possible in elementary or high school. For my part, I prefer to talk about wooden pencils. My weapon of choice.
I started writing when I was in high school. I wrote hundreds and hundreds of texts. Millions of words often written in pencil, sometimes in pen. At school, it was in pencil. During my summer remedial classes, from the first year of high school to the fourth year, I used this tool extensively and exclusively for my essays, my projects and all my other writing.
Despite the introduction of the computer—and despite the requirement to submit my college work in Word format—my pencil was never far away. I am one of those who wrote their text by hand before transcribing it on the computer. Which takes twice as long, you might say! Maybe, but it allowed me to reread, correct, and improve my text. Three actions that are disappearing today.
When I got to university, I got eaten up by the machine and I quietly abandoned the pencil for the computer. Already at that time, voices were being raised against the drift of French and the growing inability of the new generations to write properly.
Fortunately, there were spell checkers, especially auto-correct on cell phones. The generation after me started writing by sound, just writing a few letters and the auto-correct on their iPhone would do the rest for them. No need to worry about mistakes: you would write and something would immediately correct it for you.
I’m talking about the new generation, but it doesn’t have the exclusivity of this neglect or even the monopoly of this intellectual laziness. Today, even automatically corrected text messages seem archaic, since our cummy ChatGPT now writes everything for us. In addition to no longer having to write, we no longer need to know how to write…
You probably remember saying many times to your parents and teachers: “What’s the point of learning mathematics or geography if I never need them?” And we were told: “You never know when you’ll need it, that’s why it’s important that you learn it…” This seems even more true today with French.
It’s not just that young people don’t know how to write anymore, they don’t know how to write anymore. In my university classes, if I want to increase the level of psychological distress of my students, if I want to increase my failure rate, if I want to increase my dropout rate and if I want to provoke tears, nothing could be easier. I only have to ask my students to write me a text in class. In addition to being used to writing less than 180 characters full of mistakes and without structure, students are rare to have legible penmanship. They are even rarer, those who use an eraser after proofreading.
Today, I feel like we are witnessing a return to the past. Archaeologists rejoice when they discover hieroglyphics and find their meaning. Archaeologists and historians praise the intelligence and advancement of the ancient peoples who invented writing and this means of communication.
I, armed with my pencil, eraser and sharpener, look like a Cro-Magnon man. Every day, in the wonderful world of work, I take notes and fill my notebooks with my wooden pencil. Of course, the 16-year-old who is in front of me in an interview or who meets me during his reception and integration looks at me as if I came from another planet.
All because I have a row of sharp wooden pencils on my desk. And I know full well that he never used this tool. The pencil is dead, long live the pencil!