Schools Should Teach Letter Writing (Part 2)
To Gen Z, emailing is instant messaging with extra steps.
Letter writing has survived millennia. You just… learned it. But when mail become electronic, letter writing wasn’t taught. Now Gen Z doesn’t understand emails.
Review. Teachers should expand beyond tested-only writing and teach letters. Media literacy should mean practicing and contrasting media. The digital world was built as an extension of physical culture. When we lose that physical culture, we lose the tethers to the digital world.
Check out Part 1 as well as feedback comments for letters and emails.
Yes, but. “Why teach letters? That's archaic. Messaging is messaging. Embrace digital technology and teach kids what is relevant today…
After all, paper letters are obsolete. Why waste time learning a dead medium? It wastes valuable class time. Besides, it’s not even a standard.
After all, there's limited career relevance. Who sends physical mail today?
After all, if it's truly archaic, we should expect to see pushback, right?
'Cold Regards'. Gen Z does not like emails. At all. According to The Daily Mail, bosses have been forced to contact new employees through Instagram because young workers will not check their messages. While some cite intergenerational frustration with the medium, others describe their utter contempt for conventions. Why is this?
"The medium is the message." (Marshall McLuhan)
Type Here. Physical mail became electronic mail (email) and email became part of messaging interfaces. Conventions change, but foundations remain. If we neglect teaching communication, convention collapses into interfaces.
We underestimate—at our peril—how digital interfaces began with physical conventions.
Simply put: If we teach letter writing as a foundation, it becomes assumptions for emails. If not, other conventions fill the vacuum.
By contrast, instant messages (IM) best serve short ideas. Longer IMs begin to require structure and do not fit the flow of the medium. (IMs evolve into emails.)
Similar interfaces do not mean similar conventions. Handles are handles, but hammers are not screwdrivers. IMs and email may share interfaces—"Type here”—but they are distinct.
Between the Lines. Letters and emails as a unit have four common parts: the greeting, the body, the closing, and the signature. IMs as a unit have one part: the body.
While neither happens in real time (like talking face to face), letters trade monologues while IMs string together dialogues.
When writing letters, forgetting a part results in an incomplete message. Since the medium holds more information, responses are slower and paragraph driven.
When writing IM, forgetting a part does not exist. Since the medium holds less information (relatively speaking), responses are faster and sentence driven.
Phone First. Let's pretend you started with IMing instead of letters (emails) and adults skipped on teaching basic conventions.
Why write greetings when IMing includes names in the app?
Why write subjects when IMing assumes it in the thread?
Why add dates to letters when IMing time stamps?
Why include closings IMing never logs out? When the message body matters?
Why arrange messages into paragraphs when IMing is sentence-driven?
Why plan emails when IM is reactionary? Isn’t all messaging therefore reactionary?
Is it any wonder Gen Z hates email? It's instant messaging with extra steps!
Aside. When I teach letter writing and emails, I drill the following into my students: What is the obvious first question? How did you help yourself first? If you force your teacher to ask obvious questions, then you’ve wasted a message getting to the point.
“What did we do in class today?” Did you check the website/syllabus?
“I have a question about the assignment.” Okay. What did you try first?
“Why do I have a C?” Did you check your grades first?
So What? Who cares? So schools didn’t teach letters. Society didn’t crumble. Here are some other obvious questions:
Will letters and emails die? No. Letters-as-messages existed millennia ago and will exist in the future. But text boxes carry few if any conventions. Let's hope some remain.
Will Gen Z kill the email? Let's hope not. But apps may continue collapsing into similar interfaces. Text boxes have the capacity for longer messages, but users won't care.
Would the story change if letters were taught? Maybe. Digital culture may have developed on a similar trajectory regardless.
Will computers be useless without letters? Not at all. But interfaces use metaphors. Either they stay (and stay dead) or the language will evolve and be unintelligible to us. Not that it'll matter when we're gone.
Will new conventions be bad? Maybe not. But letters from millennia ago are intelligible. Teenagers do not use millennia (?) old conventions.
Do you send physical letters? I'm sorry, who's asking the questions here? It's that I can that matters. I write my share of recommendations. Now shoo!
Final Bell. When the halls clear, I can only worry about my own carpet square. But I worry when my students step outside the square. Writing structures are thinking structures. Letters have existed for millennia.
What if conventions became forced templates? What if apps somehow integrated that basic information? Would that force younger audiences to carry them into the future?
Students memorize complicated dance moves and badly lip synch to bewilderingly random clips. Why is slapping a greeting and closing on messages so difficult?
