The Case For Mandatory Touch-Typing In High School

Hugh Pickens writes "With the perspective of forty-plus years since my graduation, I would say the single most useful course I took in high school was a business class in touch-typing that gave me a head start for writing and with computers that I have benefited from my entire life. So it was with particular interest that I read Gordon Rayner's essay in the Telegraph proposing that schools add a mandatory course in touch typing to the cornerstones of education: reading, writing and arithmetic. 'Regardless of the career a child takes up when they leave school, a high percentage of them will use a keyboard in their daily work, and all of them are likely to use a keyboard in their leisure time,' writes Rayner. 'Touch-typing would help every child throughout their lives — so why are our schools so blind to this?'"

Comments

Re:That's not really the issue here.

[rtb61]

Regardless still teaching qwerty for qwerty keyboards is long since well past being stupid. The real reason it hasn't changed, the honest to god true reason it hasn't changed, male dominated societies and bosses fucking their secretarys, really lame isn't it. Here we decades after the reason for qwerty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwerty jamming type bars on 19th century typewriters, because secretaries are to lazy to change and they can manipulate the boss with a good BJ.

At the very least all primary and secondary grade smartbooks (netbooks have become so declasse) should be alphabetic by default and the nonsense can be put to bed and not a bed involving a boss and his errant penis or (to cheer up crazy republicans) meandering cigars.

TOUCH typing?

[WebHikerOriginal]

um, what other kind of typing is there? or is this "touch typing" just another retarded redundant Americanism that slithered on to the radar recently?

Re:Schools dont change

[Mr. Freeman]

You listed two studies. I'm going to assume that there's probably a few hundred in the area. How in the fuck does 2 studies represent "every study in the area".

You've given me a 2/200 = .5% sample AT BEST.