Why is handwriting still taught when everyone types?
Because handwriting is not primarily about producing legible marks — it is tied to learning to read and to remember, and the evidence for those links is stronger than the practical case for typing suggests.
The reading connection. Forming a letter by hand requires producing it from memory, which builds a motor representation alongside the visual one. Studies comparing children who learn letters by writing against those who learn by typing or tracing consistently find better letter recognition in the writing group, with brain imaging showing activation of reading-related regions during handwriting that typing does not produce. Writing letters appears to help children learn to read them.
The memory connection. Research on note-taking has generally found that handwritten notes produce better conceptual understanding than typed ones — the usual explanation being that writing is slower, so the writer must summarise and select rather than transcribe, and that processing is what aids retention. The specifics have been debated and some findings replicate unevenly, but the mechanism — that effortful processing beats verbatim capture — is well established independently.
The automaticity argument, which is the most practical. Writing by hand consumes working memory until it becomes automatic. A child still thinking about letter formation has less capacity available for what they want to say, so composition quality suffers. Fluent handwriting predicts writing quality substantially, and this is the strongest reason for practising it.
Other reasons it persists: exams in many systems are still handwritten; signatures and forms remain; drawing, annotating and diagramming are natural on paper; and hand skills develop fine motor control broadly.
Where the criticism has force. Excessive time on presentation and cursive joins at the expense of composition is a real problem; children with dysgraphia, dyspraxia or motor difficulties can be badly served by handwriting-heavy assessment, and typing is a legitimate access arrangement rather than a concession.
The practical position: teach both. Handwriting for learning and fluency, typing for volume and revision — which is what most curricula now attempt.