In Memoriam: The Typing Class

By Gordon Hopkins There has been a lot of debate on what subjects should and should not be taught in schools these days. I would like to give out my own two cents on the matter (assuming economics is still being taught in schools).I think schools should bring back typing class.Yes, I am old enough to remember when schools teaching kids how to type was a real thing. I took a typing class in high school. The classroom held maybe a dozen of those massive 1970s electric typewriters. My most vivid memory is the sound. When all those machines were on at the same time, a sinister buzz that you could feel in the hairs on your arm filled the room, like a transformer just before it explodes.The purpose was to teach touch typing. I never got very good at it. The teacher kept insisting I type without looking at the keys. I never could do it. Even once I (kind of) memorized the keyboard layout, as soon as I took my eyes off the keys, my fingers would drift, usually to the left. The teacher would give me a sentence to type out:“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”When I tried to type without looking at the keys, what I usually got was:“Thr qiovl ntpem ghov lo.]f ]nty u'fvp dog.” (I peeked when I typed the last word.)Still, if you don't judge my technique, which is admittedly terrible, I've become a pretty decent typist over the years. I use mostly just two fingers and I definitely look at the keyboard, but I was once clocked at 75 words per minute. That was a long time ago. Anyone who reads my writing (especially the newspaper's proofreader) knows my accuracy isn't the greatest.And yet, as a man who makes his living typing and has done so for a long time, the class was clearly a benefit to me. When I took a typing class, only a minority of people really needed to know how to type. In these digital days, everyone types. Even if they don't type for a living, folks need to access bank accounts and social media accounts and news (hopefully using an actual newspaper subscription and not just online news aggregator sites).So why did the typing class disappear just when it seems the most needed? I guess the use of keyboards became so ubiquitous that most folks have already been typing on computers and tablets and phones before they even reach high school (and perhaps even before they reach school age).If told to take a typing class, I suppose most kids would just ask, “Why do I need to take a class to learn how to do something I've been doing since I was three?”Actually, that hypothetical kid who doesn't think he needs a typing class would probably text, using his thumbs on his phone, “wat I need a class 4 lol”And that, my friends, is the crux of the problem. More and more, people are communicating via typewritten words but have never been given proper training about proper typing. The result is a lot of bad habits: no punctuation or random, inappropriate punctuation; bad spelling; refusing to capitalize; using dopey acronyms; assuming everyone understands what your dopey acronym actually means, etc.I guess my point is, I really wish folks would learn how to type. I mean properly type, following all the rules and such.The late Cormac McCarthy, who ironically never used a computer but wrote his award-winning novels on a typewriter, didn't use quotation marks. I don't know why but it makes reading his work rather frustrating. Still, he won a Pulitzer, so he could get away with it. You can't.

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