Where's the "Any Key"?

Dude, I'm right here.

Not long ago, my little 4^th grade sister was using my laptop to type an email. Knowing better than to leave a fancy new lappy with an eight-year old, I checked on her after a few minutes.


After the initial relief that she wasn’t deleting everything on my desktop or creating a MySpace page for her pet mealworm, I noticed that my sister was chicken-pecking away at the keyboard with the index fingers of each hand. I told her it might be a good idea to practice “big-kid” typing, as she’s getting a little old to be only using two fingers. I moved her hands so that all her fingers were lined up on the “home row.” My sister stared at me, blankly. “I don’t know how to do this,” she said. “Aren’t you learning how to type in school?” I asked her. She said no. Finding this very hard to believe, I went to my stepmother, who confirmed my fears: Typing has been removed from the elementary school curriculum.

In the 1950s, amid restrictive gender expectations and limiting educational values, a dumb girl with nothing to her credit but a blonde head of hair and large mammary glands could secure a respectable job if she knew how to type. The sexy secretary stereotype is derided and frowned upon today, but hey, at least she had a job to pay for her rent and her Vivier stilettos. Now that this vital skill has been removed from the school curriculum, what are those girls going to do? I hope today’s little boys grow up to be wealthy, successful, and in want of wives—once these empty-headed  beauties find themselves barred from one of their only available career paths, rich husbands are going to be in greater demand than ever! (Although they’ll have to get rich as professional athletes—they won’t get through university, because they don’t know how to type either.)

Apparently, the reasoning behind the discontinuation of typing class is that kids are so into technology and communication these days, typing isn’t something they need to be taught anymore.

I’m sorry. Did I miss something?

The powers that be in this case do have a point. Today’s youth are growing up in a society that revolves around texting, instant messaging, technological communication and online networking. What I fail to understand is how ceasing to teach children the most basic skill to surviving in this environment is doing them a favour. As a young adult, I can thrive in this setting because, having mastered the basics at an early age, I have been able to adapt to new methods of communication as they evolved around me.

What children are expected to accomplish with no tools and no training these days confounds me. My sister has told me numerous times of the many PowerPoint presentations she is required to put together for class, and yet none of these children have been taught how to type. With technology permeating their world faster than flatulence in a crowded elevator, the ability to type should be seen as crucial, not unimportant and disposable. I doubt that your PowerPoint will wow the bosses at your next board meeting when the company’s name has been spelled wrong and the text took weeks to cobble together. 

These children are being thrust into a fast-paced, technological world with little to no preparation. “Text speak”, for example, has, for better or for worse, developed into a dominant aspect of youth culture. Having learned to type, we eliminate vowels and reform words to create a shorthand with which we identify. Younger children—already exposed to this fad everyday—are missing out on that key first step, the practical foundation that will set them up for understanding the nuances behind modern communication. Running before you walk, knowing the rules before you can break them...these clichés exist because at the heart of them lies a grain of wisdom—wisdom that is apparently lacking in certain elementary schools.

What scares me the most is not the idea of a rising generation of computer-illiterate youngsters, or even the knowledge that my little sister has never felt the thrill of watching a pixilated kangaroo hop across the screen with every word  she types correctly (“All the Right Type” FTW!). Nay, the scariest thing here is that some board of educators somewhere—people whose job it is to decide what’s right for our children—honestly believe that this is a good idea. But what do I know? I’m just a youngster myself, without any fancy-pants degree in child education. All I know is that whereas I took swimming lessons as a kid with water noodles that I hung onto as I kicked around and blew bubbles, apparently the new method is to chuck the kid into the deep end of the pool and say, “Meh, I’m sure they’ll figure it out.” For the love of God, I hope there’s a lifeguard on duty.

Are children taught to type in schools in your area, or is this skill left to the parents where you are, too? Do you think it's a step forward or a step back to remove it from schools?