I took a typing class in junior high. I touch type well - except for numbers. I have to glance at the keyboard in order to insert numbers or symbols from the top row. I can use the number keypad by touch, though, if I’m typing a lot of numbers.
My kids’ school teaches touch typing in 6th grade.
I was never taught how to type; I used to hunt and peck, but after enough time I found myself looking at the keyboard less and less. these days I use my own self-taught system, which is a chaotic mess (and somehow does not involve my thumbs at all), but works for me, although my typos are still terrible. I’ve considered learning how to touch-type, but frankly, I’m afraid that it’ll just slow me down.
I look at the keyboard quite a bit, but I can type incredibly fast.
I have my own system, although it is more-or-less based on proper touch typing methods. I had a few classes in elementary school that used software to try and get us to learn to type, but I never took a typing class (funny enough, my high school had a learn-to-type class called keyboarding but if you were one of the kids taking science classes, it wasn’t available for your schedule. I guess they figured all the non-science kids would need to learn to type well!)
I’m pretty fast, though I make mistakes that I can correct quickly on the fly.
I took typing in high school knowing I’d have college papers to type. Of course then I became a reporter and considered it essential. I saw all those old farts huntin’ and peckin’ and thought it was ridiculous. It’s an easy skill to master for heaven sake.
I had to take it in elementary school. We had a required weekly computer class, and about half the time it consisted in games to teach us how to type. 
This was late 80s, early 90s.
Under-30 here.
I’ve worked a lot of jobs in which typing was a major requirement, and as a result I type between 80-90 WPM. I maintain that the typing class I took in junior high was the best class I took at that school–even though the teacher was a sedentary toad who did little more than tell us the page in the textbook to use for the day’s exercises, I got a solid skill out of the experience.
Typing turned out to be one of the most important classes I ever took in high school. I mean, I haven’t had to solve a calculus problem in twenty years but I type, a lot, every day.
My kids are learning “keyboarding” in kindergarten, first grade now.
Took a typing class in 6th grade. Around 7th grade I started playing mmorpgs online and used the aforementioned skill to my advantage, it grew as the years passed. Now I can type about 85-95 wpm depending on my mood. 20yo college student here.
Edit: I guess what I do is considered touch typing. I don’t look at the keyboard, keep my hands in the taught home keys and type from there.
Age 46 (soon to be 47). My father made me take a semester of typing during my senior year of high school (at an all-boy Catholic high school, only the one semester was even offered). My father’s reasoning was that, once I went off to college, it’d be a useful skill to have, and I wouldn’t have to hire someone else to type up my term papers.
At the time, I was annoyed, as one had to get to 20wpm on a manual typewriter (this was 1982, after all) to get an “A” for the class, and I was afraid it would affect my GPA. I struggled mightily to get up to 20wpm, but I did it.
Over the years (and the transition from typewriters to computers), my speed and accuracy gradually increased – the fact that my career has mostly consisted of writing while on a computer undoubtedly helped. I now type around 70wpm.
Four finger search and destroy method. Like any good journalism school graduate.
It will slow you down for a while, but eventually you’ll probably be significantly faster (and more accurate). I resisted learning to type at first because I could do 40 wpm with hunt-and-peck, which seemed perfectly adequate, and like you, I worried that hassling with touch-typing would just be frustrating and slow me down.
I wound up taking a typing class because someone told me that you couldn’t get into journalism school without knowing how to touch-type (false, and I never went to J-school anyway, but that’s beside the point) and wow, the difference between touch-typing 90 wpm and hunt-and-pecking 40 wpm is significant.
If you’re happy, you’re happy, though.
Typing was a required course for me in Jr High, as well. Hated it. HATED IT!! Literally threw up at least once a class. HATED sitting there for so long, not moving, typing the same shit over and over again…
And I’m so very grateful for it now. Back then it was electronic typewriters, still with the correction strips and not the windowpane where you can just hit the ‘back’ key a few times, so…kinda old. And I have used regular typewriters, as those were the standard then. But…so happy for electronic keyboards. <3 Seriously, my handwriting sucked to begin with; 30 years of never writing anymore than my signature hasn’t helped.
Judging by the results, I’m guessing I voted in the category (“haltingly” instead of self-taught). I was focusing more on the looking down part, which I tend to do pretty frequently, instead of speed, which is modern-normal (“everyone” today can type).
Anyway, on my left hand I pretty much use only my index and middle fingers. And wow, am I ever self-conscious about it while typing this this post.
I hunt and peck, but it’s not slow. Last time I measured, it was about 30-40 words per minute. I really don’t need to go any faster; most of my time spent while writing is thinking about what to say and double-checking the syntax, not finding the keys to do it.
Self-taught system, age 20
I took several touch-typing classes throughout my K-12 school years, and none of it, and I do mean NONE of it, ever tactually registered. By the time I took my first typing class in the 3rd or 4th grade, I had already been typing in my own way for years, and that system by then had become so engrained in my mind that there was no way that I could ever adopt another typing method. Throughout every typing class I ever took, the same cycle would repeat; the instructors would attempt to get me involved in touch-typing via whatever methods they’d utilize, I wouldn’t know what the Hell I was doing, and after the class was over I’d go back to excelling at my own devised way of typing.
I guess you could say that I’ve “mastered” my own self-taught system. Ironically, the way that I type is probably similar to touch-typing in that I use most of my fingers; I figure the difference would be that I use my index fingers and move my hands around the keyboard far more than a touch-typist would. I usually look at the keyboard when I type, though that’s more out of habit than anything else; I can manage perfectly fine just looking at the screen (except for moments when, like others, I need to find some miscellaneous symbol or number). I know for a fact that I don’t type as fast as a professional touch-typist, but my system is still damned fast in its own way.
I really had no idea how fast I typed only that I do touch type. I found this site http://speedtest.10fastfingers.com/ and got a 72 so I guess that high school course was worth missing a free period for.
I did well over 50 WPM back in the 9th grade, in the early 70’s when I learned on an old IBM electric model. On the family’s manual Smith-Corona, I could hammer out 40+ WPM.
Today I clocked in at 73 WPM on the test above.
Learned to touch type in junior high (reaching the exalted speed of 84 wpm), and it’s one of the best skills I ever learned. It’s served me well in college and in business, and makes typing chores so much easier. I can actually type while carrying on a conversation at times. The only difficulty I have is with the number row: I can do it without looking, but it’s slow and not always trustworthy.
Touch type well - age 27, learned freshman year of high school.
I voted in the 25 or younger bracket, I’m an idiot, sorry.
Typing is so much easier on my hands than writing long-hand, I love it. We did a test at work not too long ago for fun, I can do 80wpm and I still got whooped, several people in our office can type 120wpm - that’s fast!
If the top row of numbers disappeared from my keyboard I wouldn’t even notice, I never got used to using them from the home row, I just use the number pad.