I'm Finnish. We also start with wooden pencils and graduate to either ballpoint pens or some kind of fineliner marker. I am the only person I know with a fountain pen who actually uses it for normal writing. Mainly because it hurts so much less.

In the US most kids learn with pencils. When I was a kid we used wooden pencils until mechanical ones were eventually allowed and ballpoint pen usage typically was discouraged until high school. I settled on smooth flow liquid ink ball point type pens for extensive handwriting nowadays.

i’ll have to check it out — back about five years ago r/fountain pens was a great community!

ooh very nice… i better not look into it or i will be buying more pens… haha.

my biggest issue is finding paper that is not super expensive and can hold the ink well… bristol board is my favorite but loose sheets are annoying. i’ve found platinum’s carbon black to be the absolute best ink, after trying out many goulet and noodler’s blacks…