Which developed countries have courses in school to learn touch typing?

I have never, ever heard about it.

Edit: by touch typing I mean having your index fingers on fj and from there using ALL keys without ever leaving the starting position, and yes that includes shift, alt and control and special characters.

I know very few people who are really touch typists (I am a proficient one), and I don't believe for a second people are taught touch typings, it's a skill that requires consistent training.

> Which developed countries have courses in school to learn touch typing?

Mine did (Europe). Junior high. Around the age of 13, I think. It's been a while. But only as part of a particular course, which I didn't take - I had picked another one. I don't remember which one included the touch typing, but apparently it was one which a lot of students attended.

I learned touch typing at home when I was 14 or 15, my mother changed careers and had to learn touch typing, so she borrowed a Scheidegger typewriter (those with the coloured keys) and a course book, and I thought "Why not?" and did about 15 minutes every day. I tried to be consistent and do it "right", and after three weeks I had it pat down (I should add that those who followed the school course were for the most part a bit sloppy, and most didn't really learn it even though they had the course for the whole semester).

Then when I did my mandatory military service we had to go through a touch type course as well. It wasn't even half as good as the Scheidegger course, but in any case I could touch type already so I didn't care.

For me it helped greatly to be able to touch type when I started working in programming - my mind would fly and I could keep up with my typing. I cringed when I watched over the shoulder of (equally young) colleagues who constantly had to break their concentration to hunt for keys to press, one at the time (of course as years went by those people got much faster, with the same method, and those particular problems disappeared for them).

And in my job I've always had to write a lot of documents, and of course touch typing helps greatly there.

Well I grew up in Canada. We had generic 'computer lab' classes (don't remember which subject it was associated with for most of those years) from kindergarten to grade 12. Touch typing was definitely drilled into our brains throughout.

And of course it's not a 'course'. 'Reading' and 'writing' weren't courses, but you learn them regardless. It's too basic to be a course. It's just stuff we learned.

Edit - the format for schooling here is for the first 6/7 years you have a single teacher all day long. That teacher teaches you every subject. And that included several trips to the computer lab per week. The next 6 years of schooling had 'courses' split up by teacher and time slots, but again, computer lab time in some of those courses. There was also a required course called 'CALM' (Career and life management I think) which included a very strong computer lab component. There were also CS-ish electives (equivalent to shop classes) where you learned CS, albeit at a very basic level. And this was during an era where most people didn't have computers at home... So computer labs were always open after school hours.

Edit 2 - Anyhow, a lil random. But being able to touch-type at a specific speed on a test program was required to pass CALM and it was required for high-school graduation. Some kids could pass and then forget it all, but in general the entire schooling system here involves computers enough that most people can touch-type.

Edit 3 - My partner had a similar educational upbringing, despite being born under communism. Hell, she can touch-type multiple keyboard layouts (for other languages) on a US keyboard despite not being technically inclined...

We had a touch typing class in the mid nineties in South Africa.

I told my teacher I don't need to touch type (I could already use a keyboard from tons of programming) so she said if I could beat her I could sit it out. I beat her and she kept up her end of the bargain.

However years later I wish I had just sucked up my pride and learnt it because I had to eventually anyway. It wasn't so useful for programming, but it's great for text (emails, etc.).

I find it interesting that in your view most people aren't touch typist. My experience (now in Australia) is that most people touch type. Although, there does seem to be a spectrum of purity. e.g. my fingers always remain on the home rows, but I use left shift for all capitals except Q, A, Z (when I'm using QWERTY).

How old are you? so I'm 35, USAian, and I had typing as a specific bit of course work (can't remember the program names) in elementary school (so 92-95ish?) and there was a class when I was a freshman in highschool (2000) that was 50% typing (different program, also don't remember the name) and 50% word/excel.

I'd absolutely believe that a lot of us on HN grew up in the narrow slice of time when computers were novel enough that people thought they should teach typing specifically, before that time: too niche; after that time: it's assumed we already know

It was included as part of the curriculum in certain classes I had in middle school.

As with most things in my education, most people including myself just put in minimal effort, to get the grade (which touch typing didn’t really effect, as it was not part of any homework, quizzes, tests, etc.) and after a few years you never had to see it again.

I’m 50, and I took a typewriter course in high school because it seemed obvious that keyboarding skills would be useful, although computers themselves were still somewhat niche.

It was called “computer class” but most of it was touch typing (you had to type with a cardboard box over your hands).

I learned touch typing as an exchange student in an US high school in the late '90s.

> Edit: by touch typing I mean having your index fingers on fj and from there using ALL keys without ever leaving the starting position, and yes that includes shift, alt and control and special characters.

Yes, we were taught that all throughout school... Is the US school system really that shit? I'm curious where your scepticism is coming from?

Like really, I didn't know a single kid in university who couldn't consistently type 60 wpm. 40 wpm was literally required to pass high school, pretty slow, but not something you can do staring at the keyboard punching keys one by one. The kids who were really good at it were touching 100wpm. I could get highs of 80-90.

I can count on one hand the amount of people I've met who can't touch-type...

You're assuming that most of the writing is done on computers - but depending on the discipline - it isn't : computers aren't nowhere nearly good enough to compete with paper / chalk (/ even whiteboard !) when it comes to mathematics-heavy domains.

Pure maths is a pretty small niche. The vast majority of while collar work, university students, etc..., definitely type and use computers constantly.

I meant most STEM students plus some others (economics). While we do use computers constantly, it's not comparable to how much more is directly written / drawn on paper. (Well, pre-Covid at least.)

I suppose it depends on your definition of touch typing. Back in the early 70s, before many people had heard of personal computers, I was planning a career in journalism. I had to learn my way around a keyboard, so I took a quarter of high school typing. It didn’t teach me to “touch type” in the sense of achieving 100 word per minute or whatever, but it was the solid foundation I needed for typing in college, in my (too brief) journalism career, in office work and systems admin work. I’m reasonably fast, and I don’t always look at the keyboard, and no one has ever complained about it.