Why Won’t They Teach Touch Typing in School?

Did you have typing classes at school? I did. I thought it was a ridiculous waste of my time. I was never going to become a secretary, which is all we thought it was good for.

I wanted to be an actress, an architect or an airline pilot, in that order. No typing necessary.

Little did we know, some ten or so years later, there’d be an invention that would change the world as we know it. The computer.

Suddenly everyone was a typist. Except they weren’t. The Two Fingered Hunt and Peck was the favoured technique amongst office staff not trained for secretarial roles.

But the biggest increase in use of the keyboard came with the introduction of the mouse and drop down menus. Now everyone was in on this typing caper, including the executives. It meant they didn’t need to know that Alt + F4 will quit WordPerfect. Just wave the mouse around for a few minutes, hunt and peck and voila, you’ve got a document. Don’t mention that they didn’t understand all the protocols of paragraphs, spacing, creating indents and lists and such.

It became unnecessary for anyone to learn to use the keyboard. And by this, I mean touch type. Fingers on the keyboard and working independently. You can be reading one document and typing it out without looking at the keyboard. 

I’ll admit, I’ve made the mistake in the past, of mentioning the advantages of touch typing. I’m here to tell you; 

Don’t do that. It never ends well.

“No!” they will cry, “I can type really fast!”

“” I say. When what I really mean is, “.”

(Text has been redacted for the safety of the author)

So, there it is. Touch typing is infinitely faster and more accurate than two finger typing.

But please, don’t go! I didn’t really come here to brag.

My point is:

“Why aren’t they teaching touch typing in schools? Now that nearly everyone
has a PC or laptop and can benefit from learning to type properly?” 

I have a child with dysgraphia.  Not well known in the community but think of it sort of like a cousin of dyslexia, and it also affects the ability to write and draw. But get him on the Xbox and his fingers are like lightening! 

So get those fingers working for good rather than evil, I say! Give the boy touch typing lessons, please! And whilst you’re at it, teach the rest of the class as well. They will thank you for it later when they go to secondary school, university, get a job, or dare I say it, become a writer. 

The ability to put down on (virtual) paper, thoughts as they are forming in your head, without distracting the brain with the process of finding what you need on the keyboard is forever magical to me. I imagine it must be similar to those lucky people who can play a musical instrument without having to think about it. Or do a reverse, one and a half summersault in the pike position with two and a half twists from the three metre board. Muscle memory is a wonderful thing!

I hated those black bibs we had to wear to cover our hands and the clunky old manual typewriters. And I’m afraid I don’t even remember our typing teacher’s name. But I’m forever grateful that someone, back in the mid-seventies, thought I should learn to touch type. I just wish everyone would stop telling me not to put two spaces after a sentence! It’s stuck in my muscle memory.