When I was in grade school, we had a couple of computers. (Apple IIe) I was pretty good at Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, if I do say so myself. But other than the fact that we had Typing Tutor, there was no focus on typing skills. My first actual typing class was in the 9th grade.
I’m assuming kids don’t wait until high school to learn to type these days. So when is this introduced? Or is it just assumed that they learn that at home?
I am 20 years old now. I went to a public school, where they started teaching me typing skills in 4th grade - maybe even earlier than that.
Took it in 9th grade. That was in 1961. Easily one of the more useful courses I had. Got my first job with the government a Summer later, as a clerk-typist. Made more than my friends. Comes in useful here, also.
I’m 27,
Typing classes were offered at my High School but I never took them.
By the time I was in University I realized that my typing speed was making essay assignments take far longer than they needed to be.
I spent probably about 6 hours on Mavis Beacon - just to teach myself the proper key fingerings. Then, though it was hard due to my history of hunt and peck, I just forced myself first to not look at the keyboard no matter what, then to always use the correct fingerings even if it felt awkward.
It didn’t hurt that I was big into computers and INTARNET chat; after about a year I was pretty darn proficient. These days I can go at about 80 wpm without many errors.
It really ought to be taught to kids, and early. Nothing is more painful than watching colleagues who don’t know how to type properly muddle through basic tasks like e-mail 
Typing ought to be considered a baseline skill, up there with arithmetic and spelling. There’re really very few jobs left that don’t require at least some typing.
I believe formal typing lessons began in the 5th grade (which was in 1995 for me), but we were of course typing stuff before then. Indeed, much of the time was spent trying to un-teach whatever typing methods everyone already used. It seldom took.
If I recall, typing lessons continued until the end of middle school. There were no specifically typing classes offered in high school, although there was a remedial computer class that may have included typing–I wouldn’t know.
I didn’t really learn until after I got my BA in 1980. Incredibly, most of my professors during the four and a half years i was at UCSD allowed us to turn in papers written in longhand. A family friend made it a condition of her giving me a recommendation to grad school that I learn to type.
Best advice I ever got.
Does anybody still work as a clerk-typist? It seems that now virtually everybody does their own typing, except for those in extremely high places.
I took typing as an elective in 8th grade in 1975. That was before computers were common. We learned on real typewriters – manual ones, even.
One of the best elective decisons I ever made.
Ed
raises hand
Right now I’m handling switchboard, but my official job title is clerk-typist and before I landed this plum (it IS a plum…I don’t have to work with the public face-to-face and I get my own (very small) office) I entered applications into the system and did various reception-related duties. I work for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
They tried to teach me to type once. [del]I ate their livers with fava beans and a nice Chianti.[/del] I was at the head of the class because I completely ignored them and kept typing the way I always had and still do. I was slowed down the most when I had to fake the home-row positions whenever the teacher came around. I got a nice little certificate for completely blowing them off every chance I got.
I can’t remember if I was in the 9 or 10 grade when I took it. I took it because I needed to take that or home-economics. I thought typing would be less boring.
It was the mid 70s. Now that I develop software I am glad I took it.
I took it in 7th or 8th grade, on manual typewriters. That would have been… hmmm… 1981 or 1982?
Glad I did it. I can’t imagine not being able to type, seeing as I pretty much spend all day in front of a keyboard.
My daughter (who is currently in 9th grade) had the option of taking “keyboarding” in 8th grade. I bought her Mavis Beacon instead. She now types 40+ words per minute. Which is good since she has atrocious handwriting and does most of her non-math homework on the computer.
I’m 18, I learned at about 1st/2nd grade, we had all sorts of fun things in the computer lab (and for no apparant reason my elementary school those two years had a Mac Lab so half the time we’d blow them off and play with Kid Pix).
I had the fastest WPM because I have an odd typing style. I had to fake the “home row this finger goes to this key” stuff. The teachers loved to “correct” me. Basically my typing style involves some odd hand placements (i.e. shifting my right hand right one spacing when I have to type certain words putting hands in overlapping columns using odd fingers and contorted motions for certain keys). It gets me in trouble when I’m not paying attention (i.e. when I’m really tired and typing on forums or in a realtime chat like in a game, but I’m fine with papers and that) because sometimes I’ll lose track of my hands if my mind isn’t with it and end up shifting, say, every letter to one above it or to the left of it (for example). I’ve been known to hit caps lock on occSION INSTEAD OF THE “A” KEY (yes, that was intentional there ;)) for example.
Overall, I really don’t see why they bother (if they still do anymore), I mean how many kids are NOT on Yahoo/AIM/Myspace/WoW/Whatever or some sort of electronic typing nowdays. Only a handful really, and it only teaches you “kosher” typing techniques that I think most kids either figure out themselves, or outright don’t need because their style is as good or better. Or maybe I’m just blind on these matters, it’s happened before.
I graduated high school in '94 and took Keyboarding in 10th or 11th grade as an elective. I had taken a couple of computer programing classes in jr high/high school, where we learned things like Basica and played lots of Oregon Trail.
The high school where I teach out now does not offer a typing class at all, but the middle schools all have a required computer class. I don’t know what it consists of though.
I tell you what, I can’t stand watching the majority of my students type. I mean, I know that can do stuff technologically that I have no idea about, but the “hunt and peck, type only with one finger” stuff drives me nuts!
You think that’s bad, watch me when I go into my “right hand on, B, H, U, and I” mode. 
I’ll tell you what, my boss’s boss can’t type. And it’s a fucking pity to watch. He spends probably 60% of his time simply on e-mail (none of it wasted, all lots of good coordinating of resources - he is a good boss)
I’ve brought it up to him - you could be far far more efficient (and therefore productive) if you learned to type properly.
His response? “Eh, I don’t have time”
So he won’t spend 10 hours learning to type that would probably translate to 500 more productive hours / year for the job.
I learned the home row typing method in sixth or seventh grade on old Smith-Corona typewriters. However, with the advent of mass produced online services like Prodigy, I soon evolved my own method of typing that uses muscle memory.
Taking a random typing test, I get about 77-80WPM.
This is using eight fingers and muscle memory.
I still remember my BASIC teacher staring at me pounding merrily away on the old computers that we had in the room, and sighing and shaking her head. At least she didn’t whap me over the knuckles, so that was good.
Those of you who taught yourselves to type: Are you able to look at a book and copy the contents without looking at the keyboard? Just curious.
I am amazed that high schools don’t offer keyboarding classes. Typing was the single most useful class that I had in high school. (Actually, it should be offered in elementary school.)
Had a typing class in 8th grade. By that time, I was already typing around 100 wpm with my own system. They made me learn that damned “home-row” system, and that slowed me down to about 45 wpm. From the constant “doing it the right way” typing, I found I could no longer do my old system. I’m back up to 90 now doing it “the right way”, but I mean come on, someone explain to me why 100 wpm wasn’t good enough to warrent letting me keep doing it how I wanted…
It is, here. My kids are 22, 21, 19, and 18. Every one of them learned to type in elementary & middle school (they start computer lab in first grade). Each year they take a thing called “keyboarding”. In late middle school and high school they can move away from “keyboarding” and take other computer-related classes or skip them. But they’ve all been exposed to enough “keyboarding” to type fairly well, even the Marine.
Basically, by the time they get to high school they’ve had enough “keyboarding” to choke a mule, so there’s no longer a need to teach it.