Handwriting and school education in the age of artificial intelligence

While the connection between digitalisation and writing has already been analysed in numerous research studies, the evolution of artificial intelligence causes shifts in this area as well.

Children now spend an extremely unhealthy amount of time watching screens, creating challenges for professionals who are practically unable to prepare for. Bethesda Hospital launched a special campaign to share the shocking data that the average daily screen time for children between 8 and 12 is now more than five and a half hours, while it is over eight hours for teenagers and offers tips to parents on how to reduce screen time.

While composing texts using computers is now – without question – an essential part of our daily lives, handwriting has been proved to help tackle reading problems, improve logical abilities and even manage hyperactive behaviour. No, nobody is saying that penmanship, calligraphic letters, letters connected with great precision, in short, cursive writing is just as necessary today as it was when certificates and all official documents were written by hand but learning and regular practice of handwriting is in our own best interest. And not only for children.

Handwriting in adulthood and in university education

One explanation for the above or a further addition may be the pace of writing. Using a computer with ample proficiency allows us to record a text heard literally in full, which makes writing a quasi-mechanical activity. In contrast, handwriting is a slower activity requiring some sort of filtering, summarising, selection of important information, the ability to generalise, in other words, it is a form of a more intense mental effort.

This has an effect on thinking not only in children. Just to mention one example: both national and international experience from the last one or two years shows that the prevalence of academic misconduct involving artificial intelligence significantly increased, especially since ChatGPT was first introduced in 2022.

An article published on Qubit states that “artificial intelligence is rewriting how Hungarian universities teach and assess their students right in front of our eyes”. However, it is also true that Hungarian universities may have a slight advantage over, for example, universities in countries where the native language is English because the smaller the field of expertise is, the more specific a question is, the more probable it is that the user is offered general statements, cliches or even false information as a response.

While university guidelines about the use of artificial intelligence were in place earlier, for example, in Hungary, Eötvös Lorand University took action relatively fast and issued a more comprehensive set of regulations about the use of AI in education this autumn.

Eötvös Lorand University reckons that the conscious use of artificial intelligence may support the development of students, may lead to new learning methods and may increase the efficiency of students, while indiscriminate use may oversimplify the learning process, hinder the ability for analytical thinking and prevent the deep understanding of the academic content taught.

These regulations allow the use of these tools, provided that they have a complementary, supportive role in a student’s work and they do not substitute human creativity, decision making and critical thinking, while failure to comply with the rules is strictly sanctioned. They were jointly drawn up by the delegates of student representations and the rector’s commissioner, relying on the best practices already in place in the university’s faculties. The university also launches a mandatory training from the 2026 autumn semester, designed to provide general information on AI tools and teach students how to use them correctly and consciously.

The end of home assignments?

In the last three years, the use of artificial intelligence has spread like wildfire in public education and at universities. As a rule, it is allowed to find inspiration and at a project level, but the boundaries become blurred very quickly, with students breaking the rules intentionally or unintentionally. Having these programmes write their home assignments in full, often simply copying the responses received.

This has become a universal problem and it is even beginning to transform the forms of assessment. Teachers generally very easily notice if a student chose the convenient way to write their home assignment and it contains perfectly formed sentences in a foreign language or too abstract thoughts for a student’s age. Naturally, this, i.e., quick detection, may change over time as the artificial intelligence further improves and becomes more precise and accurate.

It may be needless to say that papers created this way, or more precisely, copy-pasted, fail to support learning, as students do not acquire the knowledge taught. This has also been confirmed by an experiment at Corvinus University, which was terminated midway, but the result is still obvious. “Weak students were happy to have an easier way with learning while better students realised that they can get the same result with less effort, so they stopped hassling with the traditional learning methods,” says Márton Benedek, teacher at the Department of Operations Research and Actuarial Sciences.

The above creates new challenges for all levels of education that need to be addressed. One approach is that the students are asked questions about their papers and are only rewarded with points or grades if they are able to answer the questions in their own words.

These instances of misuse partly explain why handwriting may be reinstated nowadays, as it helps prevent cheating in classes and with home assignments, students at least need to write down the AI-generated text, which is already much more than copy-pasting it with two pushes of a button. Telex published a long article about this trend, concluding that a total ban would naturally be a wrong response, but new strategies must certainly be developed in education for how students are taught and assessed. If you want to read more about this topic, you are recommended to read the book jointly written by Tibor Prievara and Gergely Nádori, published in 2025: AI az oktatásban – A mesterséges intelligencia bevezetése az iskolai mindennapokba ("AI in education – Integrating artificial intelligence in everyday school routines").

Therefore, handwriting may be efficiently used to detect cheating, deepen knowledge and for other purposes as well, as we discussed it multiple times. There are many studies, partly from Finland, confirming that children who replaced handwriting with digital platforms and keyboards very quickly showed signs of a decline in the development of their logical skills. In addition, the act of pushing controllers fails to sufficiently aid the development of fine motor movements.

In contrast, teaching handwriting is an essential tool in the management of the various learning difficulties, reading problems, non-verbal learning difficulties or even hyperactive behaviour and as such it plays a very unique and fundamental role in the development and studies of children.