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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?'"
Say goodbye evolution/creation debate. Say hello keyboard layout wars.
I won't have you teaching my children DVORAK, you left wing hippie! If QWERTY was good enough for our founding fathers, its good enough for us!
I'm a software engineer, and I get to work daily with some people who never learned to touch-type. It would be a nice bonus to productivity if everyone around me could; not ground-breaking, but nice. I think, by and large, by the time people hit the workforce, their typing habits are pretty unlikely to change without some major effort. Is even high school too late? Most kids are regularly using computers right through primary school. I think learning to type is a responsibility shared by parents and primary schools these days.
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.
I had mandatory touch-typing in middle school (6th-8th grades) and it was worthless. I didn't learn a thing - I typed slowly and uncomfortably.
Then one day, I decided I wanted to learn to program computers. I taught myself C, and halfway through the project discovered that I had become a pretty good touch typist. Typing is a skill like riding a bike - you'll learn it by doing it. Forcing it on kids (who would rather be taking another, more meaningful course but can't because their schedule is full of crap) is only going to make them resent it.
Just because something is valuable doesn't mean public education has to teach it. As I student, I can say that the room in our schedules is finite, and if it's both useful and easy (like typing) we'll get it on our own, we don't need it taking up scarce time slots.
I don't type very fast, but I also don't really have anything too interesting to say.
Typing speed is what matters. I've never taken a single touch typing class, and with the exception of knowing what the two notches on the F and J keys are there for, I have little idea of what finger is for what key. The result? I type at 90+ words per minute and have extremely high accuracy.
Touch typing classes were MUCH more relevant in the days when correction tape was used and it meant that important papers would have to be completely retyped when there was a mistake. Alternately, it was important when correction tape or white out was actually a major office expense. Both of these issues are entirely irrelevant today.
If you want to push for something, how about hand writing classes since there are massive numbers of people that after leaving high school use a pen or pencil for little more than writing their names or doodling a picture on their notepad during a meeting. Penmanship is at an all-time low. Boys who were classically bad writers to begin with are probably unlikely to be able to read their own writing anymore. Girls are the new boys, their handwriting is deplorable as well now.
An even better idea, how about mandatory short-hand classes so that when people do not have computers available to them (for example in meetings) will be able to write in some for or another that allows them to take accurate notes and still read it afterwards when they're back in front of their computers. It's been around since the days of Caesar, believed to have been invented by Cicero's manservant Marcus Tullius Tiro and yet, while being a most efficient form of writing is still barely used outside of court rooms.
People who need to learn to type will learn on their own. On top of that, it's rare that you encounter a high school student these days that can't manage at least 30 words per minute. Their greatest flaw is no longer in typing speed, but the fact that even with a spell checker, they can't spell for shit. Let's not forget that spell checkers don't cover things like They're Their and There.
As chairman of the Hunt-And-Peck Association of Typists (HPAT), I demand equal representation in the class room.
When I was in elementary school, we went to the computer lab a couple days a week and were forced to use the PAWS typing tutor software on the Apple IIe. Is it really that case that there are still schools that don't teach this? Also, based on my experience, I don't think we should wait until high school to teach people to type. Elementary school seems like the right place, as children are learning to read and write, why not learn to type too?
Teaching children touch-typing is an excellent idea, but high school is much too late. Even junior high school kids have reports to write, and still younger kids are using computers. Touch-typing should be taught in elementary school. As far as the curriculum is concerned, grade five or six would probably be alright, but it might need to be earlier to prevent kids from fossilizing bad two-finger habits.
I went to an unusual school that taught touch-typing in grade six back in 1968. We didn't have personal computers then, but for me it was a godsend as I have awful handwriting. Judging from my experience in that school, sixth graders have no difficulty learning touch typing.
I don't want their hands to be crippled before they start their first job!
I wouldn't accept anything less than this: http://www.datahand.com/products/proii.htm
With a adapted proper layout like DVORAK, or for German keyboards NEO ( http://www.neo-layout.org/ Because compared to this, DVORAK looks like a bad joke of inside-the-box thinking ^^).
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I do not (repeat do NOT) use the "home keys"
I can understand getting away with not using the ';', but this post itself contains all the home keys.
You must be some kind of savant.
Bottom line is, they need to be learning things in some sort of a sequence so that they can build on what they already know. My opinion is they should go with it as follows:
I am well aware the article talks about teaching this at the high school level, but from what I've seen, it doesn't improve much. When I was in high school, there were juniors and seniors who could barely read, and their handwriting may as well have been from Omicron Persei 8 for how legible it was. We need to make sure kids have a handle on the basic skills BEFORE they get to high school. If we can manage that, I'm pretty sure most will pick up typing quite well on their own.
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
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.
I'm stunned that it isn't required already. I took typing and even did it with a broken finger taped to a popsicle stick but it was one of the best courses I took. It is agonizing to watch someone poking their fingers on a keyboard with their hands moving all over the place and their eyes looking down and up and down and up. So much wasted effort and time and at the same time, businesses let people get away with this too. I've seen developers who can't touch-type and that is pathetic when such a skill means so much to getting the job done. Would you hire a mechanic who used a wrench for a hammer and screwdriver as a chisel? But, it's allowed, it's accepted, and as we have been made aware in this thread, touch-typing is an after thought in our school system so it's unlikely to change.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
the last thing you want in the front line is to be on the receiving end of a "typo" when someone has keyed the wrong coordinates in for an artillery mission or airstrike...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I'm a software engineer who can't touch type. And I can honestly say that learning wouldn't increase my productivity in any measurable way.
I'm a software engineer who can touch type. And I can honestly say that not knowing how to touch type would decrease my productivity in a measurable way.
That's anecdotal evidence, by the way.
Let's look at the larger picture here. You're correct that the "typing" part only makes up part of what a software engineer does. I'd say about 25-50% of my time is spent typing (not only code, also documentation, e-mails, blog posts on the internal company blog, wiki updates, etc.). Wikipedia says:
An average professional typist reaches 50 to 70 wpm, while some positions can require 80 to 95 (usually the minimum required for dispatch positions and other time-sensitive typing jobs), and some advanced typists work at speeds above 120.
Two-finger typists, sometimes also referred to as "hunt and peck" typists, commonly reach sustained speeds of about 37 wpm for memorized text, and 27 wpm when copying text but in bursts may be able to reach up to 60 to 70 wpm.
So let's say it's 60 wpm for touch typing (I know I'm quite a bit faster than that, but we want to go with averages) and 37 wpm for two-finger typing.
So, considering all this data: We probably spend about a third of our work time typing, and touch typing is on average roughly 1.6 times as fast as two-finger typing. For an 8-hour work day, that results in 2.7 hours of typing, of which roughly one hour is "wasted" for two-finger typers.
I'd say one hour each day is a measurable increase (or decrease) in productivity.
On top of that touch typing just isn't comfortable for many people.
Then many people learned it wrongly.
Hurt my wrists horribly to try to type like that.
Then your position is incorrect. You really should have learned how to touch type properly :-)
Touch-typing is a drop in the bucket.
Agreed. Since most people can't write, there's no point in having them touch type.
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Made from the freshest electrons.
Wasn't in the curriculum 30 years ago?
Nonsense. Was too.
It was an optional class in my high school, and it was full of girls, so I took it so I could sit next to HER.
The touch typing is still with me to this day, but I haven't thought about HER for 29 years, until just now.
It was the single most valuable class I took in High School.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I started out as kids do, performing simple hunt'n'peck maneuvers. By the time I hit high-school it was well ingrained. At age 19, I wrote a novel of over 1,000,000 characters over a 1.5 year period, averaging four hours a day of just typing. That burned the keyboard layout into me (I would -never- go DVORAK).
Even now, I don't even have to look at the keyboard to type near perfectly, long as my wrists remain still on the rest I don't lose my place. I can even type just as perfectly with my eyes closed or in a dark room by centering on the F and J keys to start. My style is now a mastered form of hunt'n'peck, hunt'n'peck taken to the Nth degree, massively improved through perfect memorization of the keyboard layout and ingrained muscle-memory, such that I can type now about 80 words per minute. It's simply 'think and the words are typed' at this point, as natural as speaking or writing with a pen.
There came a time once that I thought I should improve my typing speed by learning to do real touch-typing the way professional typists must learn. So, I picked up a 'teach me typing' program, and diligently went through the courses for quite some time. I think it was 'Mario Teaches Typing' :P It had which finger you were supposed to use and all that jazz, and I did what it asked to the letter. Used the proper fingers, and arranged my hands as asked.
Only one hitch: my hands began to hurt, a lot. I noticed there was a large amount of unnatural stretching and contortion compared to my mastered hunt'n'peck method in order to reach the key with the 'proper finger', the one the program demanded I use. Now, I didn't simply give up, I wanted to master this technique, I was committed. But, after a month of daily practice I couldn't take it anymore. I was nearly as fast while touch-typing, but my hands were killing me.
I realized then why typists get carpel-tunnel syndrome and the like. Dogmatic touch-typing it terrible for your hands! You need to be able to relax your hands as your type, not stretch and contort them unnaturally. I went back to my freestyle typing and never looked back.
My typing can realistically be called freestyle because, based on what combination of letters and words I'm typing, it could be any number of fingers that are available at the moment to type that key. The difference is, I know I have to hit that key, and it happens quite naturally. I don't use my pinkies to type at all (well, maybe to hit shift), but I use everything else. That's probably the difference between my speed and a professional typist, since 80 WPM isn't really something to sneeze at but a pro typist can hit 50% faster.
But, now I'm attempting to turn myself into a professional author, and typing has become my primary skill, my devotion, my life. I'm glad I never took the touch-typing route! I'm quite certain that I will never develop carpel tunnel or repetitive strain injuries because my hands are relaxed, my fingers don't contort, and typing is done in perfectly natural motion. No overextended fingers, no awkward combinations. No pain.
That's my experience. That's the wisdom I've gained.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
"The system's efficiency is dropping steadily and steeply; teachers are out of touch with current technologies"
Has calculus changed in the last 150 years?
Has English changed (aside from a handful of grammar constructs, a few words, etc.) in the last 50?
Does addition work differently that it did in the 15 century?
Adding new teaching methods is a good idea if they work and help learning. i.e. putting full color 3-D graphs of certain functions in calc. books.
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.
Unfortunately, every time anyone tries to put "technology" into public schools, it fails miserably. Students are much better off taking notes from a lecture written on a chalkboard than watching a presentation bluescreen for the third time this week.
People are very quick to say "TEACHERS ARE OUT OF DATE!", but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The material being taught hasn't changed because IT STILL WORKS LIKE IT DID BACK THEN!
The other argument is that classes are "less relevant" to today's students. This is really just another way of saying "students are lazy and without spinning animations on screen every 5 seconds they start to daydream". Calculus is just as relevant to students now as it was to students 50 years ago (depending on choice of profession, this may be a lot or a little). But putting the fundamental theorem on calculus or on "these new-fangled interwebs" doesn't result in better learning over seeing it on a chalkboard.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
I learned 2 different touch typing systems so far (QWERTY and Dvorak). Why?, because I'm unbelievably lazy. QWERTY was the obvious first choice, Dvorak was the improvement on it as I had to put in even less effort for typing after I learned it.
Oh, and by the way, no school thought me this back then. I so dream of the day when schools start to do comprehensive education for life, but I guess that won't ever happen.
Anyway, I'll never understand people, who sit in front of a screen 8 hours a day and use the 2 finger search system for typing. Seems so infinitely more work intensive. But non adaptive people still love to it.
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...
It was the single most valuable class I took in High School.
...for one handed typing?
rewriting history since 2109
I've kept trying to tell my own kids that out of all the classes I took in HS, typing has helped me the most.
Sure math and english were important, don't get me wrong, but the typing helped the most.
BWP
Most people I've seen who learned to touch type 'by themselves' are just fast hunt-and-peck typists who've memorised the key locations. Sure, they'll do OK at first, but they'll struggle to get above 40wpm. On the contrary, if you at least learn which finger goes on what key and then practise with that until you can touch type you can easily teach yourself 'the rest' and hit 80+ wpm with no problems. Touch typing with 9 fingers (My typing teacher told me she'd cut my left thumb off if she saw me using it :P ) is potentially at least 4.5x faster than doing so with two fingers due to maths and stuff.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
>>I do not (repeat do NOT) use the "home keys"
>I can understand getting away with not using the ';', but this post itself contains all the home keys.
I tore out type ere I wrote, to type up top:
upper typewriter row, pert repertoire.
Reporter, I quote to you: To write, pop type out.
Retire typewriter row two. Your tri-row?
Rip it out, too. Tour your top row territory.
Queer tip, you retort? I worry your poor typewriter?
To torque it out -- typewriter terror?
You require row two, your tri-row prop?
You pout, try to quip. (Poor etiquette.) You titter.
(Poorer propriety.) You utter uppity output?
Quiet, you! Quit it! You purport to write.
I tire to peer to your rot, your petty writ,
to eye your wire report. You write pyrite,
terrier to torpor. I pity you, preppie yuppie.
I tutor you, tyro, to uproot your trite tree,
put type to pyre. Rupture type. Write to write.
I erupt. I riot. I prototype pure power
to write. I, upper typewriter requiter.
I outwit you, too. To perpetuity, I write poetry.
You, to put it true, putter out rote poop.
(with regards to Nick Montfort)
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?
OK, let me get this straight --- your reasoning is basically "I was taught some skills in school that are now obsolete, therefore touch-typing is obsolete"?
Similarly with touch typing.
Are you stark raving mad? Do you have any idea how many people have to use computers at work on a daily basis? Unlike tabulation machines, there's a keyboard on almost every desk in the world these days - yet you equate the two, and get modded up!? And most of the users type painfully badly ... imagine every single one of them could type better, faster, more efficiently. Yeah, totally obsolete and useless.
OK, let me get this straight --- your reasoning is basically "I was taught some skills in school that are now obsolete, therefore touch-typing is obsolete"?
No, the purpose of a modern American school, at least in part, is to teach obsolete middle class skills as rich peoples hobbies, so a school teaching touch typing would be a strong indicator that most computer usage is or soon will be obsolete.
The educational theory is for the middle class, based on worship of the upper class lifestyle, while confusing cause and effect. A quick summary of the theory would be that only rich people can afford to learn "useless" skills for fun, therefore if you learn useless skills, you'll become rich.
Example of typical middle class education primary revolving around obsolete skills that are only useful for rich people's hobbies, thus if you have the time to waste to learn them, you must be rich, aspirational, etc:
1) Music classes - Musician used to be a middle class lifestyle, before the recording cartel/industry/complex took it over. Now only rich people can afford to focus on music.
2) Art classes - See all that "decorative americana junk" at the walmart, craft store, etc, made in China, to decorate our walls? Middle class people in the USA used to make "decorative artistic americana junk" and sell it to each other but now its all imported from China.
3) Wood shop classes - Furniture carpenter used to be a middle class american job, before it went to China and/or Amish.
4) The whole concept of the steam whistle coordinating the middle class worker at the factory assembly line. All that has gone to China except for their kids responding to bells/buzzers at school.
5) Political Science / Government used to be something middle class folks needed to know, but now the TV tells them all they need to know about politics, or at least the last TV commercial they saw is the only thing that affects them. The only reason for middle class folks to learn about it is to participate (if you are in the oligarchy and have a last name like Kennedy or Bush or Clinton) or as an idle hobby in your spare time.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The length of compulsory government education for children has steadily increased since it began as it was always the intention of the creators and maintainers of it to remove the task of raising children from parents to the child rearing "experts" (aka themselves). This in their own words was to ensure that children were moulded to requirements of industry and enlightened society without parents interfering and undoing all their hard work.
That is not in anyway a secret to anyone who has a cursory knowledge of the history of Compulsory Education.
Not to mention most of primary school now is purely social indoctrination and almost no hard academics is taught until fourth grade.
If you believe students are learning more than they did 50 years you're living in an *absolute* fantasy land.
The fourth grade curriculum had children reading and understanding Shakespeare and de-constructing poetry. Being able to do advanced multiplication and division in their heads was compulsory (my mums books from primary school look just like my high school books, my eight year old boys third grade books look like my kindergarten books).
The school system educates children just fine by the way, you just have to understand what exactly it is that they are being taught.
Understanding starts here: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
Yeah, I kinda forgot about that. I graduated in 1974. I took typing as an elective, and I was one of only two boys in the class. We caught hell, because the jocks thought it was effeminate. Today, I guess all of those jocks search for their porn with the old tried and true hunt-and-peck method. That sure slows a guy down, I imagine. Learning to type was probably the best move I made in high school. In the Navy, I was able to sit in an office and fill out forms in a minute or two, that other people spent 10, 15, even 30 minutes doing by hand. That ability got me INTO the office, where I was able to sit on my butt while other people chipped paint, carried supplies, swabbed the decks, etc.
Today, our local school system has "keyboarding" classes. The kids know how to do things with a keyboard that I never wanted to do. I still don't know what those 16 extra keys are supposed to do on my own keyboard - I'm perfectly happy with a standard 102 key! :^(
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
As a bit of a reality check, let me describe what happened when my school got one of those "smart boards".
The teacher that ordered it was rather technophile, for a teacher at least. Though also a little older, not quite up to date with current technology. However, when he tried to use it in class, he ran into all kind of problems. The software required a later version of Internet Explorer than was installed on that presumably vanilla Win2k that was supposed to run the thing. Not that it said so outright, it gave a cryptic message about some function not being available. Of course, he had no way of knowing what's the problem was, and sent for some tech support. They took the PC with them, and didn't return it for a week. So, it was back to traditional blackboards.
After the PC was back, it was discovered there were applications missing the smartboard software assumed was there, e.g. Acrobat Reader iirc. So, it was back to tech support again.. And so on, thousands of problems came up that prevented the use of that shiny new toy, and after a while even that teacher gave up.
So, you're saying it's stupid to not be able to install a smart board. I don't think teachers, or anyone except computer professionals, have to have this obscure knowledge about interpreting cryptic error messages, and as computer technology is often portrait as the solution to everything, more people run into that kind of problems, get frustrated and give up.
Contrary to common conception, computers are not the solution to everything - way too often, they create problems where there were none, trying to solve non-issues.
I have yet to experience a use of a smart board, where a traditional blackboard wouldn't have done the job at least as well, without requiring any training on part of the user.
Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
An interesting side-bar:
I have a friend who suffered brain trauma. He lost his ability to speak and write (aphasia). He could understand everything spoken to him. The unusual aspect of this injury is that his ability to communicate via typing was unharmed (this came out during a PT session using computers). He couldn't remember how to join words with a pen -- he couldn't remember how to say words to form a sentance -- but he could read and type. He could also read out loud. He keeps canned phrases on his phone which he'll read off.