The scene evokes a nostalgic vibe, reminiscent of the 1950s, where students are busy with manual typewriters, the rhythmic clatter marking the end of each line.
Grit Mathias Phelps, a German teacher at Cornell University, aims to give her students a hands-on experience of writing without digital tools once every semester.
No screens, no online dictionaries, no spell check, and certainly no delete keys.
This exercise started in the spring of 2023, driven by Phelps’ frustration over students leaning on generative AI and online translators for flawless assignments.
“What’s the value of my feedback if it’s just perfect already and not genuinely your work? Can you produce content without a computer?” Phelps questioned.
Her goal was to help students grasp what writing, thinking, and attending school was like before everything turned digital.
She scavenged thrift stores and online platforms to collect numerous old typewriters, forming what her syllabus described as “analogue” tasks.
While it might be too soon to declare a typewriter revival beyond Cornell, this move does align with a growing trend across the country that favors classic testing techniques—like in-class handwritten exams—to deter AI usage in assignments conducted on laptops.
Typewriters offer a glimpse into the past
Students walked into class one recent analog session to find typewriters awaiting them on their desks, some equipped with German keyboards, others with standard QWERTY layouts.
“I was totally baffled. I had seen typewriters in films, but nobody explained how they worked,” reflected Katherine Mon, a 19-year-old freshman taking Phelps’ introductory German class. “I had no clue there was such a technique to using them.”
Analogous to rotary phones, manual typewriters may look straightforward, yet they are quite unintuitive for today’s tech-savvy youth. Phelps showed students how to feed the paper manually, stressing the need to tap the keys firmly enough to imprint the letters. The sound of a bell signaled the end of a line, indicating it was time to return the carriage for the next line. (“Oh, so that’s why it’s called ‘returning,’” observed one student.)
“Everything slows down. It’s reminiscent of days when you genuinely concentrated on one task, and there was joy in it,” Phelps noted, often bringing her two children, ages 7 and 9, as “tech support” to ensure no one resorts to their smartphones.
Students found fewer distractions
This assignment imparts lessons that extend beyond just learning to use a typewriter, which is precisely the intention.
“I realized that typing on a typewriter alters not just how you engage with it, but also how you interact with everything around you,” explained Ratchaphon Ratdamrongwong, a sophomore in computer science. In this class, the task was to pen a review of a German film they had viewed.
No screen meant no notifications to divert focus while writing. Lacking immediate answers, he engaged more with his peers for support, something Phelps actively encouraged.
“Writing essays pushed me to socialize more, which seems normal for earlier generations,” he commented. “Yet, the dynamics in modern classrooms differ significantly. Students are often buried in their laptops or phones.”
With no delete key to erase errors, he took more time to reflect on his writing.
“It might seem tough, but I had to work through my thoughts rather than rely on AI or a quick Google search,” he remarked.
Manual typing as a workout for the fingers
A majority of students soon realized that their little fingers weren’t quite equipped for touch typing, leading to a slower pace as they tapped at the keys with their index fingers.
Freshman Mong faced an additional challenge of using only one hand due to a recent wrist injury. As a perfectionist, she felt frustrated seeing her pages filled with mistakes and inconsistent spacing. (Phelps suggested using backspace to replace an error with an “X.”)
“The paper I handed in was messy and didn’t appear polished, but I learned it’s okay to make mistakes,” said Mong, who found the poetry typing task both “fun and demanding.”
She experimented with spacing and played with the layout, even indenting and breaking lines in a style reminiscent of poet E.E. Cummings, despite using numerous sheets and making multiple mistakes.
“I’m likely going to frame my work,” Mon shared. “I have a bit of a fascination with typewriters. I told all my friends that I took my German exam on one!”
