In the year 2000, 44% of high school graduates completed a course in keyboarding. In 2019, this number decreased to only 2.5%. The art of keyboard typing was almost lost, but now it is actively growing due to the rise of AI prompting, and more technological industries opening up in the workforce. During our time in high school, we have learned many different skills. We’ve learned advanced mathematics, we learned how to properly write essays, and we have even learned how to properly do a push up. These skills, while important, overshadow the increasingly necessary skill of keyboard typing.
At Tallwood, most of our assignments are put into Canvas on our chromebooks. Some of these assignments need students to type constantly, and some students do not have the ability to keep up.
“CLICK. CLICK….CLICK.”
Two-finger typing—also known as “hunt and peck” typing—wastes a significant amount of time. This can be detrimental to students writing timed essays in English classes, or coding in data classes. These keyboard based setbacks can be quickly and easily solved with the addition of a typing or keyboard class in school. Also, a class dedicated to typing could better students outside of school work through digital world based job effectiveness.
Furthermore, a typing skills class would help with keeping the digital world equal. In the digital space, not only is there already a split in the younger generation and the older generation in terms of technology use and knowledge, but there’s also the issue of digital equality within the education system. In the digital realm, some students cannot keep up with the workload or assignments given to them because they cannot type as fast or efficiently as their peers. This creates a split in the student body and ends up with some students being left behind and labelled “lazy” because they cannot finish as quickly as other students who knew how to type prior to high school. This label creates an inequality and can be entirely prevented by a typing class in school.
With every new generation of children becoming more and more reliant on technology literacy, it has never been more important to understand how to use it. Understanding how to type is a very important part of understanding technology and its advances. Without a class to teach proper typing, students are at risk of falling behind the times, being labelled lazy, and becoming marginalized as technologically illiterate.
There are too many digital areas for students to not know how to properly go about communicating and writing in them. Despite some people believing that students should learn typing on their own, it is a better idea to put it into a class in high schools. The teaching of typing would help students in class and the digital workforce, and also promote digital equality in the new digital age we find ourselves in.
