Posted on 08/12/2018 6:39:30 PM PDT by libstripper
I hate to break it to parents who just sent their college-admission-minded progeny to the Tibetan Plateau to churn yak butter, but the smartest summer I ever spent was in secretarial school.
This was back when I was 17, and it wasn’t grist for an essay about a transformative communion with people outside my clique. I wasn’t ripping the blinders from my eyes. I was typing — hour upon hour, day after day, with my shoulders back and my spine straight and my hands just so.
(Excerpt) Read more at outline.com ...
I’ll be honest. The most valuable class I took in high school, the one that has lasted me my whole life, was typing back in 1961. Still use the skills I learned even though I really disliked the class and teacher. We used to ring the return bells (you have to be of a certain age to know what that is) to bug the teacher.
Wonderful, beautifully written piece. Thank you for sharing.
Mine was: "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country."
I worked as a newsman at a big radio station in Dallas from 1969 to 1972. Zero typing experience and electric typewriters. I had to learn fast. I dropped the typing class in college, but I developed a great 4 finger style at the radio station that lasted me through being a newsman, law school, and my practice till I retired. I’m two thumbs on the Android now.
Wait, should be the ‘Racist’ New York Times, right ?
“Mine was: “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country”
No Q or Z.
L
I took typing in 8th grade.
Learned the basics of touch typing.
It served me very well. At least as well as algebra, I would say.
I have used algebra a good bit.
See? Not everything you print has to bash President Trump! You can do it, if you try!
Good piece. I learned to type in summer school when I was 10, which was definitely worth the effort.
My congratulations to the author, who learned to type very fast. I always thought I could do that, but somehow never got around to it.
I was going to pass on reading this essay till I saw your post.
So I read it. And you're right: it is very well written. That's something to appreciate these days.
Very nice!
And add to that “The Gods of the Copybook Headings”.
“The Gods of the Copybook Headings” is a poem published by Rudyard Kipling in 1919, which, editor Andrew Rutherford said, contained “age-old, unfashionable wisdom” that Kipling saw as having been forgotten by society and replaced by “habits of wishful thinking.”[1]
The “copybook headings” to which the title refers were proverbs or maxims, extolling age old wisdom - virtues such as honesty or fair dealing that were printed at the top of the pages of 19th-century British students’ special notebooks, called copybooks. The school-children had to write them by hand repeatedly down the page. However, the marketplaces were areas that dishonesty and immorality ruled. The Gods (or principles) of the marketplace represent selfishness, reckless progress, over-indulgence and a failure to learn from the past.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_of_the_Copybook_Headings
Same here. I took two years in typing in high school during the 1970s. The first year was on manual typewriters and the second year we moved up to the electric ones (IBM Selectric II which was state-of-the-art).
Normally girls took this class and as a boy, I took a more than a little ribbing over it. But I really liked typing and got up to around 80 wpm be end of my second year. To this day, I amaze others with my ability to touch-type without even having to look at the keyboard.
In keeping with that the only HS course my Dad made me take was typing, I use it to this day.
Typing was offered through community ed. I took it the last the last year it was offered (I think I was going into 7th grade). Then I took keyboarding in high school. I agree-it’s one of the most useful classes I had. My husband never learned to type. Pains me to see him hunt and peck.
I had my kids do keyboarding online, but they never embraced the challenge. They also never use the desktop computer. All their papers, even lengthy research papers, are done on their phones. I think it’s crazy, but my daughter is as pained by me texting with one thumb as I am watching my husband hunting and pecking on the computer keyboard. She probably gets more words per minute on her phone with two thumbs than I ever did on the keyboard with all ten fingers.
Good article, thanks for posting. It brought back memories of high school long ago and far away.
Sophomore typing class 1977-78. The only elective class worth a flip....and one that I can use to this day.
The two most useful courses were in 1969 when I took typing for six weeks, and 1987 when I learned my first computer programs, ProWrite and Grade Assist. Other courses were far more informative, but I typed my way through to the doctorate, and computered my way through my college career. That seems to be a common thread here.
No x eitber.
I took typing in 8th grade. Important skill that I use all of the time. In my senior year of high school, I took a class in office machines. Learned to key punch on a number pad very fast without looking at the pad. We used those old hand crank adding machines, and the old cash registers. Hand held calculators were just coming out. Memories
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