When I was in college, the phrase “keyboard skills” evoked many negative reactions from many of us.
Learning to play piano was, succinctly, not a good time.
But even at the college level, we weren’t handed a Beethoven piano sonata and asked to plunk it out by whatever means necessary.
This is what we’re doing to kids in schools. On the other kind of keyboard.
Technology is a big deal right now, and many people clamor for more and more technology.
Testing is also a big deal, and the majority of the Tests are computer-based.
But at no point are kids being taught how to type. Not in a slow, systematic way that actually yields students who can touch type.
Maybe they’ll be shown where their fingers go and it will be explained some. But kids in kindergarten are being asked to log in to computers, and the only way you can do that is to type in your user name and password.
(What they’re doing after that varies. Working with a mouse or a track pad seems appropriate maybe.)
We didn’t even have computers in school until I was in late elementary school. (Shakes fist at kids on lawn.) And yet we learned to use computers. People my age and older are not in short supply in the tech industry.
Children don’t need to be on computers from when they’re young to be able to learn them. Children do need to be taught to type if they’re going to be effective using keyboards. (I have so many thoughts about what we should and shouldn’t be doing in the lower elementary grades and younger, but that’s a series of rants for another day.)
I was talking to a friend who does IT work. He said that they have young programmers who hunt and peck. Pretty quickly, but still.
Delay computer use in schools. Teach keyboard skills.
