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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?'"
Touch-typing is a drop in the bucket. First, we'd have to begin to get rid of the lecture method with all it's crotchety old proponents who over-emphasize the main learning stream while under-emphasizing the alternatives. Then we'd have to rebuild education metholodogy to suit the 21st century. I'd say we're a few generations behind.
Agreed.
When you take a better look at it, our education system has just been adding more of the same. My grandmother took four years of obligatory education (this was in Yugoslavia, now Croatia; YGMMMV). My parents and I took eight years of primary school. The current government, may it burn in seven hells, wants to make the first twelve years of education obligatory.
The worst part is that the second four years of education are rather alike the first four, albeit with several new subjects, i.e. some old subjects diverging into several new ones. To top it all, the four years of current secondary education are just a rehash of the second four years of primary education.
The system's efficiency is dropping steadily and steeply; teachers are out of touch with current technologies, and those who train teachers are even worse. The school system has increasingly less connection to both the real world and to its basic purpose, i.e. teaching. Instead, schools' primary purpose is becoming something quite different: keep the children trapped in the system, and keep young people at children's level for as long as possible.
Touch typing would be a giant step forward in any education system since a primary skill would be taught. However, I abhor the idea of such a skill being graded, as it usually happens with anything taught in schools.
BTW curious tidbit just crossed my mind: instead of teaching touch typing, Croatian schools recently reintroduced calligraphy. Instead of learning normal cursive script (joined-up writing), first-graders are taught old-style calligraphy. The fact that practically no-one uses a pen these days seems to have escaped the 19th century educators.
Bloody morons.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Agreed! I took a Scheidegger touchtyping course when I was around 10 years old, on one of ye olde electric typewriters, and it turns out that it is one of the most useful things I ever learned. Well, math and spelling are very useful too, of course, but touchtyping is a skill that has served me throughout my professional life.
The problem is that in elementary school, most teachers don't know how to touch type, so how could they teach the children? The teachers should be taught first!
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
But adding new technology is bad if it isn't used correctly. i.e. putting "smartboards", projectors, etc. in every classroom. No teacher knows how to use them, they are all required to use them, and student learning completely stops. Sitting in class for 20 minutes because the teacher can't get the computer to talk to the projector HARMS learning.
My sister was one of the first teachers around here to get those. She actually knows how to use it, and uses it to great effect.
Of course, I was the one who helped set it up, and figure out how it all works. Now that she knows, she teaches all the other teachers as best as she can.
She's a bright one, though. Most of the other teachers don't grasp things like this as quickly as she does. (thats what happens when both your parents are engineering-type people)
The sad bit, though?
The whole school has a single tech to support them. And they have to submit requests in through the county, to get the help.
The teachers ask me for help via my sister, since it takes almost a month for it to go through the proper channels.
It's not the teachers or the technology that is at fault. It's the administrative systems that are attached to them.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
In the late 1970s I took a typing class in junior high school. Boys were actually discouraged from taking typing, so there were only a few other boys in the class. Despite the speed and accuracy requirements to pass the class being quite low, I barely passed, and the teacher advised me that I should never take a job requiring typing skills.
I learned about the same time, but my experience was a bit different. I opted to take a typing class that was advertised as "business somethingorother" to prepare girls for future careers as secretaries. My reasons for taking the class were twofold. First, that's where the girls were, so what better place to meet one? Second, certain classes required that term papers be typed and not hand-written. I wasn't about to sit at home and do the hunt and peck routine so typing class it was.
I met lots of girls, of course. The problem was I typed faster than most of them, so they resented me. The more "interesting" girls were hanging around outside smoking cigarettes, anyway. ;-)
When computers came along, I felt right at home. My typing, same as you, has gotten better over the years. Funny how far learning proper technique can take you.
Best class I ever took? Absolutely. And seeing how poorly people type on keyboards today, and listening to all the "ergonomic" complaints and excuses, I'd suggest that all kids be forced to take a typing class (and preferrably on a manual typewriter where they can discover the value of technique). Whether they grow up to work as secretaries or programmers, doesn't matter. Most all jobs (auto mechanics included) involve using a keyboard for part of the work day. And for non-working hours, how can anyone find or get porn effectively without being able to type?