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.
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.
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.
I am with you. I went to a small rural school and there were only 21 people in my graduating class. My Jr. year, I had one class that was optional. Fortunately, the option went away as it ended up being Typing because no else wanted the other class.
It was beneficial in typing both my Master’s Thesis and my Doctoral Dissertation. It eventually became very important as we moved to a computer environment in the 1980’s.