My mom made me take typing in high school (for a semester). It was a very annoying class, because more of it was focused on the "appropriate" way to type a letter and so on...but I do admit, the fact that I touch type probably over 100 wpm is very helpful, now.

The typing class I took in 1979 (8th grade) was probably the most useful class I ever took. We learned on manual typewriters (the classroom only had a few electric ones), and the error rate allowed was only one per one-minute-long test. I got up to 59 words a minute with one error, which I of course rounded up to 60 wpm when it came to job interviews.

Oh, and I knew a woman 3 years ago who refused to learn word or excel because she wanted to work only in theatre and not get an office job. She was doing Box Office and insisted on not letting me teach her how to use the tracking spreadsheets I set up.

Also, I use excel in theatre all the time.

I tried learning typing at home at two different times and it never stuck. I do not touch type and I type slow.

I signed up for a typing class on my own in high school, because by then I was spending as much time as possible in the school's lab of Commodore PETs.

The typing class was on IBM Selectric typewriters, which pretty much spoiled me for every single keyboard I've used since then.

I took typing in High School. My speed is way down now, but I did pretty well at it back in the day. Unfortunately, these days I have a tendency to transpose when typing. I usually catch myself when I do, but that doesn't really help on a typewriter, even a correcting one (since the correction usually looks like crap).

I liked typing class. It was me and one other guy and 18 girls. Plus we had brand new IBM Selectric typewriters. And it was just something physical that you did for an hour. The more you practiced the better you got. It was good for my GPA. Low stress, high utility, lots of girls.

But then I went and took shorthand which was not nearly so useful, and quite a bit more difficult.

Somebody could make good money if they could invent a computer keyboard which had the crisp action of the IBM Selectric keyboard.

My typing class let us turn in extra credit by doing typing exercises on our home typewriters. I would type for an hour or so after school and turn in pages and pages, and got 110% each quarter due to all of it.

Heh. I'm reading a review of S2 of Being Human in the Guardian and apparently there's a little Buffy shout out.