Looks like some Japanese organization (might not actually be government related but I didn't know what else to call it) has conducted a study of elementary school students' kanji learning and found that while reading ability did not vary much from one year to the next, writing ability dropped off after 3rd Grade. Apparently the people conducting the study believe this is the result of excessive television watching. Here's the article:

http://www.jimmyseal.net/misc/kanji_study.pdf

I'm pretty skeptical about what they're implying. I think a much more logical theory is that writing ability drops off because the students are being asked to remember an increasing number of characters every year and have almost no need to ever write them.

Well, naturally, television is the bane of society...but I would think that they would have gotten over that in Japan.

I agree with your theory: it's the only logical explanation given the evidence. Since the lists grow exponentially and while the need to actually be able to write the kanji decreases, why should the students maintain the ability?

Computers have also been accused of the young peoples decreasing ability to write the characters. If you only use the IME to write, you don't have to really remember how to write the character..

While waiting for a test to finish, I was doodling and noticed something: I do not know how to write an ampersand. Or clefs for that matter.

Considering the relative simplicity of those symbols and how often I see them, I am honestly astounded by my inability to mentally picture an exact duplicate. I, too, blame computers.

[ファブリス]

Not only computers, but mobile phones. People in Japan can check on their mobile phone's mail program whenever they forget how to write something.

At the same time we're seeing new interesting devices like the Nintendo DS with the touch screen and pen, which lets you actually hand write the kanji. At the moment, I'm hooked on 正しい漢字かきとりくん. You can practice the writing of all elementary school kanji, plus loads of words that use those kanji.

Taking new devices like this in consideration... it would be interesting to see a comparison of speed of text input between the kanji/kana recognition with pen & touch screen; and input via the mobile phone text messaging system (which is similar to ours but instead of letters they have kana on the number keys).

ファブリス Wrote:At the moment, I'm hooked on 正しい漢字かきとりくん. You can practice the writing of all elementary school kanji, plus loads of words that use those kanji.

Sorry about the hijack, but I just wanted to add that this game is indeed the cat's pajamas for those of us with only an intermediate or so level of Japanese. Have you unlocked the mini games yet? If so how do you do it? I haven't had the time I'd like to spend on it yet, so I'm not even halfway through the first grade.

To bring this back to topic, I think that overall, with computers taking over more and more, writing is becoming less and less important, and in English terms, I think spelling isn't as important, you just need to be close enough for the spell check to know what you are saying.