Things That Are No Longer Taught in School 

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24:20- As a regular viewer of the Whistlerverse and with all the affection in the world, Simon, your french teacher was unbelievably generous giving you a 'C'

I took touch typing in high school and I graduated only a few years after Simon. It is hands down the most practical class I ever took in school and is probably the only reason I was able to graduate college. When you can sling papers out in forty-five minutes or less it really helps with schoolwork.

We had computer lab once a week and one of the first things we learned was typing. The second thing we learned was Oregon Trail. 😂

We had keyboarding class. They put a cover over the keys and you had to type a pre written phrase and your grade was based off of speed and accuracy .

As a college instructor, typing is one of the courses that we have to teach. It's amazing to realise that people are graduating high school without the ability to touch type.

I remember being taught cursive early in elementary school and being told it would allows us to write faster in college where we would be writing many essays. But then I got to college and most of my professors insisted that essays be typed or be written in print.

We don't need no education... We have FactBoi™

I graduated 25 years ago and our chemistry teacher not only did all the reactive metals he made thermite in the school parking lot. He was awesome.

I graduated from high school in 1975 and typing classes were an option. I took it and used it as an IT guy my entire career. I was amazed at the number of programmers and others who couldn't touch type and did the old "hunt and peck" method. I could turn out much more work than they could and it paid off.

I always forget that Dave is blind, and every time i re-find out I’m like, neat!

When I was in middle and high school (the '60s), typing was mainly taught to girls in "typing class" because they were expected to become clerks and secretaries as adults. I taught myself to type in college with the same book my dad used to teach himself. And with the same machine: a beast of a Royal typewriter from the 1940s. You could build the grip of a gorilla by typing on that thing.

In middle school I had a textbook that told us that: “One day man may even walk on the moon” Just btw, this was in 2012~ our school was just super poor lol

I teach primary in Australia, and the final comments about teaching social skills are very true, especially after covid. After 2 years of interrupted school, I feel like I have spent more time teaching the students how to interact and socialise than I have taught academics. This makes sense, though, during lockdowns and isolations, most families accessed the curriculum just fine, but the kids had no time playing with others their own age or collaborating on work. It's been a tough year at school for everyone since there have been constant social problems across all ages. It's sad really, I felt more like a parent than a teacher for much of the year, I personally can manage this, but so many teachers haven't and have left because it's not really what they had signed up for as a teacher. It's a shame, but I can't blame them really. Teaching has changed a lot in just the last few years, and burnouts only got worse in a job that was already known for it. Sorry about the rant, it just really struck a chord with me, I guess.

Current university student, other than we were online for COVID, my exams have always been by hand. I'm glad I learned cursive cause I use a blend of both cursive and block writing when I write which is quicker than using either alone to me.

I really thought he would go over more things that are no longer taught in schools. For instance: how to balance a checkbook, home economics, wood shop, art, music, the list goes on...

I was constantly threatened with detention with touch typing. The teachers refused to believe me when I said I didn’t have the dexterity to do it due to me having Cerebral Palsy. The teachers thought I was exaggerating/ faking (it depended on the teacher). It got to the point where I was the verge of suspension. My parents had to step in and threaten a lawsuit. After that, my only goal during touch typing lessons was to improve my speed and accuracy regardless of where my eyes were.

I learned cursive because I was homeschooled up until high school. One of my first experiences in high school was a kid sitting next to me asking what language my notes were written in.

Latin is an amazing jumping off point for other languages, Spanish, Italian, and French And already knowing how to speak English almost gives you a Keystone. If it wasn't for Latin, I would not be a polyglot.

My Latin teacher was the most popular teacher in the school by a wide margin. She was so funny, and talented as an educator, she is in the teacher's hall of fame. I feel badly for all other Latin students.

You're not "too old" to remember touch typing Simon, you're too young!

Talking about cursive reminds me of the time where my teacher told me that I had to stop writing as such. This was in high school and my English teacher told me not a single person could read my writing and I’d get marked down for it. Safe to say I can no longer write in cursive and have to print everything. The joys of being left handed and thinking at a half decent speed

The most useful class I took in high school in the 1960s was touch typing. We had typewriters with blank keys. When my son took it, it was called keyboarding. It's still taught in some schools as an elective. There are tutorials for it online. If you do a lot of writing, it's well worth learning. It does not come naturally and has to be formally learned. My father took Latin in high school and said he enjoyed it. It is very logical and does help develop good thinking skills. I was a little jealous. I wish they had taught it when I was in school.

When I was in Chemistry class in the '70s, we were demonstrated all kinds of esoteric elements (mostly under teacher control). But what sticks in my mind *now* was each student being given a vial of mercury (liquid metal at room temp). We were encouraged to play with it - I remember emptying my vial into the pencil recession in my desk, and then squashing it repeatedly with my finger until it formed lots of tiny globules. Oh joy.

Regarding Latin - obviously we don't use the language itself today, but I found it to be incredibly helpful with understanding languages as a whole and romance languages in particular. So many words in modern language are derived from it, and if you have experience in Latin then you may be able to muddle through a basic conversation. I took Latin and then Spanish, and Spanish was dramatically easier because I understood the linkages between Spanish, Latin and English. Also, learning Latin is much easier when your teacher is hot.

The 1st year of college is now about things we should already know from public schools

I'll never forget my year 6 teacher yelling at me - a kid with cerebral palsy - "Why can't you be like everyone else???"... Mrs Brockwell was such a something that rhymes with runt!! lol.

As someone who went to private Christian schools in America up until high school, I am so thankful for channels like yours because I didn't learn a lot of basic science. I remember watching the reboot of cosmos and telling all my friends who went to public school and constantly hearing, "oh yea I learned that in Jr.High.. you didn't know that?" No, I was making Jesus macaroni art and memorizing bible verses.

"If you teach you have to teach what the governments say." I feel like simon just glossed over that without quite realizing how truely terrifying that statement was.

I graduated in 1998 and definitely remember having Mavis Beacon typing as a class in the 5th and 6th grades. I also remember the first 4 school computers ever in our school arriving one day when I was in 3rd grade. The big clunky beige computers sat in a bank in the hall and a student had to request special permission to go try typing on one. Otherwise we did everything with paper and pencil.

the lacking skills when entering school thing has blown my mind recently. like, I'm older than Simon so surely there's some "LOL Boomer!" happening here, but I don't think it's weird of me to think that kids still needing a stroller at age 4 and 5 is just freakin weird. but it's more and more common now. I used to think it was a disability thing but I was shocked to find out it's just how things are going. WTF modern parents? teach your kids to walk.

Learned cursive in the 3rd grade and touch typing in the 11th. The problem with not teaching cursive is that it makes it all but impossible for the kids to read a cursive document. Touch typing is a great skill to have as I can sit here and type without looking at the keyboard or the screen. I do wish that they'd bring back home economics though - that's where I learned to sew and it really elevated my cooking skills.

I was casually acquainted with a co-worker whose bestie attended an all girls college. The BFF's class had an on campus reunion (50th?) during the relatively recent campus demonstrations (a la Trump presidential race; Geo. Floyd; student debt; inequality & inequity; etc.). The BFF came back wide-eyed and disheartened. First she was surprised by the students' appearance (PJs, ripped jeans, Daisy Dukes, and mesh halter tops vs. her years that required students to wear skirts, blouses with jackets or sweaters, suits, etc.). She said her college years were full of hope and wonder, and expectations vs. current attitude of hopelessness, gloom, and a need to tear down in order to re-build. Said she was shocked to see a sign pasted around campus announcing that "Biology Is Bigotry." She was all but unbelieving how time had completely changed the system.

My younger son started learning cursive in elementary school, but gave up when he found out that you couldn't actually curse people with it.

Latin in primary school, tell me you're posh without telling me you're posh :) *Nothing wrong with being posh or Latin

Simon’s rant about maths was extremely relatable

I was taught to write in cursive at school and had to up until the time my family moved when I was 12. My new school had us write in print. To this day, two decades later, any time I write something out it's a mishmash of cursive and print where you never know what the next sentence is going to be.

I was definitely taught touch typing. Started in elementary and continued to middle school (U.S. school system). We also took typing in high school. I graduated in 2004 so I'm old enough that the elementary typing was on a type writer. 😂 If I remember correctly we started learning cursive in elementary school. My kids are in middle school and still haven't been taught cursive.

I love writing in cursive, especially with a fountain pen… Also helps solidify my position as veterinarian as all doctors should have scribbly almost unintelligible handwriting.

I was taught how to "properly" type in school, which is to say they taught me touch typing. Sure I knew roughly how to type before but i'll admit that learning the specific "resting" position of my fingers on the middle row helped a lot. I think the only reason I'm relatively good at it is because my mom had a career of typing up dictations for doctors and could type very fast and I probably picked up a little when i was young then learned some of the skills in school. Anyway it boggles my mind that it's not still being taught in school because I think given our current culture it is absolutely crucial to your success in life.

Mr. Simon Factboy Whistler Please never change, your random rants and thoughts get me through most days. I love all your channels. You totally help my anxiety & listenign to you helps me greatly. Please Keep it up!

This video reminds me of the time when my math teacher didn't let us use our graph-calculator. When I asked her "why", she answered: "Maybe one day there won't be any calculator's or battery's around anymore." I replied: "With such future prospects, it would be more beneficial to teach us archery and hunting, rather than math's and French. Any intentions of replacing your car with a horse? Just in case..." And that was the only time a teacher threw me out...

We were literally taught how to type, believe it or not. Simon seems to think everyone was typing from birth 😸😸

Mary's Virginity Explanation Made Joseph Suspect Upstairs Neighbor

My bio teacher turned his back and let us lance our own fingers and draw our own blood to find out our blood types. And our chem teacher brought in liquid mercury, I think. Pretty sure that wouldn’t fly today. 😂 Also, the editors in the Whistlerverse are legend. Aquateen Hunger Force references? Yes, please!

We had a period of the school day in junior high school when we were able to choose 6 short classes to take out of 10 or 12 offered. Touch typing was one of those options. So, I had six weeks of typing practice in class and it continues to serve me well. I can type almost as fast as I can compose. Having those positions memorized makes even my pecking on my notebook or phone more fluid.

Learning cursive writing helped me a lot to develop drawing skills and viceversa. The further I write, the easier it is to draw nowadays. I also have a pretty handwriting that is mixed between cursive and tipewriting. Does anyone else have that adaptation?

I graduated high school in 2010 and definitely had to take typing classes in middle school circa 2002. They sat everyone down in the computer lab with a typing program. We also went over Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, and how to do things like copy/paste. I think most of the kids already knew that stuff or at least some of it. We had to write in cursive as a requirement for at least one grade year in elementary and any of our “important” essays in following years had to be written in cursive, too. I wonder if my education was out of the norm for America, or Simon’s was for the UK?

I felt the whole homework thing with your dad with my whole heart. Brought back so many (bad) memories.

I remember never being able to pick up on actual typing whenever my school tried to teach it when I was going through gradeschool, probably because it was only ever presented to us during our once-a-week computer classes for maybe a couple weeks of the year. Then my parents made me take a dedicated keyboarding class during my junior year in high school and that's when it all finally clicked, likely due to having to do it every day I went to school for a semester. Arguably the most useful class I've ever had to take.

Had an awesome teacher named Mr Skoog. Behind our Jr High was a defunct quarry that filled up with water. He took my class there with a softball sized piece of Potassium. He chunked it into the pool, and we all got a great show.

We had Caesium in School, but only the teacher use it. It wad ALWAYS kept in a glass bottle, but was kept in oil as Caesium reacted even in air.

I was finished secondary school in 1976 and we had touch typing class once a week in our last year. I went on to sixth form 1976 to 1979. I was a bit rubbish at maths but I took O level at sixth form and passed, we also covered practical maths, which was things like interest rates for loans and mortgages, how insurance and pensions worked, as well as a few lessons on the stock market and share dealing.

I'm only 3 years younger than Simon and went to school in the UK, but I never even heard of anyone taking Latin lessons. Feels like something out of the 19th century to me.

What I find interesting about the touch typing is that we're also debating about the arrangement of the keys. Our currant arrangement hails from OG typewriters, which had a maximum speed above which you would start jamming parts, so they spaced out more common keys in order to slow down the typers. Of course, technology no longer suffers from that problem but getting a new key arrangement tends to get backlash from the older generation.

Growing up in England, I was taught touch typing at junior school and again at secondary school. This was around 2004-2009. I definitely type faster than my family members who were never taught how to, even those who are otherwise proficient with computers and have had many years using them for work.

I believe you should be asked before being allowed to vote for anything if dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time. If you believe that, you shouldn't be making any decisions that will affect other people's lives.

I liked Latin personally and wish I did it earlier than year nine (aged 13/14). English people are really bad at learning languages and starting earlier with a pretty regular one which has all the grammatical features that we don't learn would be useful. Also all the notes I took in uni were handwritten in cursive (ish) writing as I found that it helped me retain information even if I never actually looked at the notes again

Touch typing was definitely a mandatory lesson when I was in high school. First we’d learn which fingers pressed which keys, then once we got it down at a reasonably good level a cover was put over our hands to keep us from seeing where the keys were and further improving our typing skills. Took me a couple of months. In case you’re wondering, I was class of 2001.

In 1st grade in the 1960s I learned reading and writing from McGuffeys eclectic primers which were printed in the 1870s. It took some mental effort to make the adjustment to aspects of everyday life from before the invention of the automobile...

I left school in the mid 80s. Teachers were expected to teach math, science, etc not discipline, not basic morals, not basic life skills. Parents were expected to teach that. And Pluto was and will forever be a planet to me. ❤️

The only benefit from doing Latin at school was increasing my appreciation for Life of Brian

My issue with math is that we'd get the simplest, most easy to solve examples in class to teach us, then the homework & tests would be filled with super complicated problems combining several different methods to solve, most of which we never got a good explanation of the order of operations. I failed Algebra 6 times before deciding I didn't need a college degree after all.

The mnemonic for the planets I was taught was "Man Very Early Made Jars Stood Up Nearly Perpendicular". In the first two years of high school, we could take touch typing as an elective subject. It was taught on mechanical typewriters, as my school didn't have computers yet (They got a few Commodore 64s when I was in Grade 11). I took these courses, but didn't do that well. When I got into programming and IT many years later, I realized that touch typing would be a valuable skill for me to learn, so I got a copy of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing and forced myself to do it until I was reasonably proficient at it. Latin wasn't available in elementary or high school. In University, I had to take 2 language courses as a requirement for my Bachelor of Arts degree, so I opted for Latin, but I could have chosen any other language being taught at the University. I had to learn cursive, which we just called "writing", while block letters were called "printing". I don't remember ever using the term "cursive". I had horrible handwriting, which I found out many years later was due to an undiagnosed learning disability called Dysgraphia (related to Dyslexia, but it's problems with writing rather than reading). I have long since reverted to printing whenever I have to put pen to paper, as my printing is much more legible. I went to a private Christian high school, but in Canada, not the US, so the Fundamentalism was dialled down a fair bit than in US schools. We were taught about Darwinism. Creationism was mentioned, but sort of in a preface that the school believed in Christian doctrine, that we would be taught current scientific theory and fact as it was understood at the time. And several of the teachers were of the mind that the Creation story was mainly allegorical and not to be taken as a literal fact and that the Bible was not meant to be used as a science textbook. Related to Latin, there was another thing I learned as a student in the 70s, but was at first surprised to find that my nieces weren't being taught in the 90s: Roman numerals. We weren't taught to do arithmetic with them, but we were taught how to decipher Roman numerals into Arabic numbers or express Arabic numbers as Roman numerals. But even at a fairly young age, I realized that standards changed and what schools taught had to change with the times. My older brother is 10 years older than me, and he was taught the Imperial measurement system, while I learnt the Metric system. And he had to learn to use a slide rule, while I learnt how to use a scientific calculator. He didn't encounter computers at all in elementary or high school, while my high school was just starting to teach the basics of home computing with Commodore 64s.

As a teacher, I am a little disappointed you didn't talk about financial skills, mechanical skills, home making skills, and other life skills that have been pushed out by tech skills and such. I also can confirm that teachers teach more and more social skills every year. And yes, I have taught kids about how to wear their clothes correctly or how to use a "big kid" bathroom and such. It's not why I got my degree in education, but, someone has to do it Edit: The day after I posted this was picture retake day, and I was pulled out of class because a female teacher had been asked to help a male student change into his picture clothes, and they needed a male teacher to do it instead.

About 90% of the tests I took in Highschool and were done on scantron sheets where we had to fill in tiny bubbles for the answers, the only exception to this were math tests and essay questions which were often they were where we had to give our opinion on something.

I learned touch typing at home I think. My parents had a typing tutor program for, like, Windows 3.1 or something so this was way back in the day. I sorta just did it because I felt like it and not because anybody told me to. Took me like a week or two to learn. As for cursive, I always found it kinda straining on the hand and over the years went back and forth between cursive and print. I learned about fountain pens a few years ago and suddenly cursive made complete sense. Fountain pens require little to no pressure to write with so the pen flies over the paper when you write in cursive.

My high school required us to take a year of mechanical drawing (i.e. drafting) in 10th grade. It was always easy to identify sophomores because they were the kids with t-squares sticking out of their bags. One of the things we had to do was "letter" on our drawings because only presses "print." That was the early 80's so our teacher probably wasn't considering dot matrix printers. But after that class, I stopped writing in cursive for everything but my signature because my "lettering" was just much more legible. My school didn't offer a typing class. To this day, I type while looking at the keyboard. I've tried various speech recognition programs over the years (remember Dragon Naturally Speaking?) but never found it convenient to use. The biggest problem I found wasn't accuracy, it was having to speak out loud when other people were around. I did have a job with a law firm where I was expected to dictate client reports into a tape recorder because it was more efficient. I could, for instance, do 4 billable hours of dictation in one hour. How could that be ethical? In order to understand you would need to not only be fluent in Latin, but have a thorough understanding of relativistic time dilation and quantum mechanics. I don't think it was ethical, but that was "how everybody did it." At least the insurance companies that got our bills knew how the game was played. But my dislike of billing was one of the biggest reasons I now identify as a recovering lawyer. I don't see why the prevalence of texting should affect whether a school offered a typing class. The biggest impact of texting (other than confiscating phones being used in class) is that some students will use text shorthand, sometimes with drawings of emojis, when writing essays in class. I am curious about the tiny bit of a second language spoken by Simon. My understanding is that he lives in the Czech Republic, not the U.K. I don't know how long he's lived there, but I would think he'd have picked up more than a tiny bit of Czech if he's lived there for any significant length of time. I wonder, does his son have to translate for him at parent teacher conferences? When I was a high school social studies teacher I had some parents that needed their kids to translate for them. Fortunately, I didn't have anything particularly negative to tell those parents, but it would have been interesting to find out if any of my troublemakers would have translated accurately.

We definitely had typing in class in the 90s, but I still don't type "correctly." I can, but I'm a lot slower then using my method, though it does include me looking at the keys, but I use both thumbs and pointer and middle fingers of both hands. However, we did not have Latin in school, even as an elective. My daughter is also being taught cursive.

Dad was an artilleryman, was amazing with math and physic homework. Also taught me the importance of never challenging a teacher's political opinions.

My schooling was in Australia in the 1950s/60s. When we moved up from using pencils it was to nib pens and an inkwell on each desk. That was a recipe for chaos for us boys. There were some typewriters for the high school girl's class that steered them into office work. The boys weren't allowed. I started a PhD in the UK in 1985. The university had a word processing 'laboratory', one of the earliest in Britain set up with govt funding. The department instituted a rule that every undergrad student had to submit at least one assignment per semester done on the word processor and not a type writer. One girl complained, 'But my mother has a secretary to do the typing!' I taught myself touch typing on the BBC Acorn computers they had. 1985, it was considered cutting edge tech. My dissertation was the first one the university received that was written on a word processor. I had a friend who had an Apple laser printer (those big heavy square blocky things) and we printed the final submission on that. Everyone was so impressed with the clarity of the printing that I'm sure it gave me some brownie points for the academic level.

School in the 60s in UK. Typing and shorthand was only taught to girls in secondary modern. It was assumed this was setting them up for a career as clerk or secretary to the people who were academic achievers. The achievers (in grammar schools) would be doing the higher up jobs and have clerks and secretaries to do their writing. I remember learning cursive writing in Primary school. We went from pencil to these wooden pens with nibs that were dipped. There were holes in the corners of our desks for ink wells. Everyone got a lump on their middle finger from where these pens rubbed (not to mention a lot of ink on our fingers). It was only when we went on to whatever secondary education we were sent to that we got fountain pens or cartridge pens. They weren't the same thing, a fountain pen had a permanent sac (not disposable cartridge) which was squeezed by a lever to suck in ink. A lot of kids filled their cartridges like this too.

As the youngest person I know who writes in cursive habitually I will say print is just faster and more legible and there's no reason to write in it other than style and habit. It has been this way since Bic made the ballpoint pen in the 60s and we are finally catching up

I learned touch typing in school (im an American) and while I did kind of learn how to type before, it wasn't as good as actual touch typing. So I think learning it is very good, cause even if you do learn it on your own, the touch typing classes do teach you how to be even more effective.

Left school 23 years ago. The tongue thing was on poster on the wall, but never actually taught. I think a teacher might have mentioned it once or twice. Taught myself to type exactly as you described, from searching for each letter to typing comfortably at 45 per minute. I think it's probably more important nowadays than handwriting. Pluto will always be a planet to me. But, I'm happy to call it the best dwarf planet and we have a truce. Never learned Latin in school, but I have looked into it for my own purposes and agree that understanding the entomology of words is important. Thought that can be done in English and just isn't at all. But entomology is a majorly cool thing to read up on. Creationism was taught in RE (Religious Education) and science was taught in science. As it should be. I do remember having to learn cursive and typing the same words over and over again. I don't even use it now, and my handwriting is still bloody awful. But as long as your handwritten notes are legible it's good. To answer your question about Ancient Egyptian. They can read it fine (though it takes a long time to translate as it's very weird). They know what the consonants sounded like but not the vowels as, for some reason, some languages of the time didn't write down vowels and ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics were syllables rather than letters. However, based on how the modern day variants sound, they can make a decent guess at how it sounded. At least roughly. Ancient Aramaic had the same problems of not writing down vowels, so they don't really know how that's pronounced either. But again it can be read. Ancient languages are really only useful for historians and archeologists, so not being taught in school in favour of currently spoken languages makes more sense anyway.

I finished school in 2008 so a little younger than Simon, and we got taught touch typing in our school, but by then I could already touch type since I was 4 XD I type whilst holding conversation with people and focusing on other things. My favourite thing is to make solid locked eye contact with someone and continue typing. It always unnerves them xD

I didn't write cursive a single time in high school, (2008-2012). That's because my teachers told me that I would never have to write cursive as an adult. And I have never once wrote cursive in the 11 years that I've been an adult.

I had a touch typing class in high school, early 90s, and that’s where I learned the home row and all. I refute his assumption that you just “pick up” touch typing; my friends and I all grew up on Zork and the Infocom text adventures, and none of us magically started doing it without looking. Without someone forcing you to learn it by feel and not look at the keyboard, you’re going to look at the keyboard to some degree. After getting a Computer Science degree and a couple decades working IT help desks and such, I still don’t truly touch-type; I kind of hybridize it by using all my fingers in the proper position but still moving my eyes from the screen to the keyboard to hit keys accurately. (Programming uses so many special characters and non-English grammar, I’d wager that touch-typing for programming is nearly a different skill than touch-typing a document for human reading.) I’m much faster than any non-computer-focused friends, and comparable to most keyboard users I meet who don’t write documents for a living. Only the people who type significant amounts seem to have had the practice to get really good at touch-typing; I imagine I *could* learn the skill if I really worked at it, but as my current style is “fast enough”, I don’t have incentive to learn it, beyond “this would be neat to be able to do.”

My 12 year old niece last week remarked that she rarely goes to her middle school locker because it’s on the other end of the school. I said I understood and hated how heavy my backpack was in school and how I didn’t have time to run to my locker change books in between classes, either. She looked at me funny. Turns out everyone uses a Chromebook now for everything, even homework. Gone are the days of endless worksheets shoved in folders and countless spiral notebooks we burned at the end of the year.

"Personal Responsibility" has been dropped in most schools in the United States.

Simon, I left school 27 years ago and never learned Latin until beginning Biomedical Science at University. I’m guessing that we went to very different schools in the UK. In fairness I was schooled in a pretty crappy primary school, that failed me on my times tables and then attended a less impressive Comprehensive Secondary School in SE London. Saying that; my children are both learning cursive at primary school and we are spending their education with a very good local Saturday school tutor, so I will not be surprised if they go on to learn Latin.

I remember my SAT and PSAT we had to write a paragraph in cursive at the beginning saying we didn’t cheat. We’d all learned cursive but the Procter still had to write certain letters on the board for us to see how to write them because we couldn’t remember

Canadian here. I learned hand printing in first grade, cursive in 3rd, I think? And then typing in 9th. The loss of cursive writing from the curriculum is sad. Not only does it create a disconnect from history, (reading old documents and letters would be akin to breaking a code), cursive handwriting also aids in memory retention in a way that typing on a computer does not. In neuroplastic terms, it causes the brain to form connections with the handwritten content. It's a real shame, verging on a tragedy that such a useful thing is no longer taught.

I've seen some of those 38% of Americans. How strong is this line of thinking? I was taking geology in college at Kansas State University. I remember the argument creationist students had with the professor about the age of the earth. To the point they refused to answer the question correctly when it came up on the test. At which point .... They loudly started the argument again ... During the test.

I was taught touch typing when I was in 9th grade. I also learned shorthand -- or at least I took a course in shorthand, can't say I actually learned it -- and that should give you a clue about when I took the courses. (Mid 70s, not the 50s, I'm not THAT old!) The main longterm advantage of taking shorthand was hearing over and over what business correspondence was supposed to sound like, so when I was in an office situation and my boss asked me to type up a letter saying basically such-and-such, I knew how to draft an appropriate business letter that got his message across but didn't end in "love & kisses, Danny." (Yes, he gave one to me like that! LOL)

When I was in middle school in 2003-6, we had "keyboarding class". They insisted, neigh DEMANDED, that we call it "keyboarding", because "you don't type on a keyboard. You type on a typewriter. You 'keyboard' on a keyboard." You could legitimately get in actual trouble and be sent to the office for calling it "typing". They also made achieving a certain typing speed (without looking at the keyboard and with absolutely zero errors) a non-negotiable requirement for passing to the next grade. I nearly failed 6th grade because of this. Luckily, by 7th grade I could type well enough to just barely pass the test they offered at the beginning of the year, and was told I could just goof off during "keyboarding" class, because they had nothing left to teach me.

They don't teach spherical trigonometry anymore and haven't since the 50's. I needed to use it for a coding project and had to learn it from a WWII training manual for bomber navigation I found on ABE. Also I take notes in two forms of shorthand "gregg and forkner" because in the work I did we weren't allowed to bring in any recording machinery( any cell phones, regular phones, mics in computers, etc) for meetings.

For the typing classes, I think it depends on the local school board and budgets. Both of my sons went to schools where typing was offered as a elective, and the youngest graduated in 2021.

One of my junior science teachers at high school was a disaster area, his name was Mr French. He did a chemistry demonstration that caused a minor explosion, and the class accident prone one, Valerie fell off her stool. He also ruined my shoes and other classmates' too, with mud, when we went to collect worms. 😁

In Australia, they have stopped teaching the European history of Australia. Kids are not taught about the white explorers or the monumental failers of early explorers like Burk and Wills, who were found dead right near their supply drop. Blacksland and Wentworth were crossing the blue mountains to find someone whose history didn't record the name had set up a farm years before the two explorers even left.

Touch type was taught to me (graduated 2000) and my sister (6 years younger). Studying a second language would have actually helped with your English. German helped my English, as English being a Germanic language helped increase my vocab and helped with my spelling.

I'm about 4 years older than Simon. I had a dedicated typing class in middle school (Texas, USA) where we learned "proper" typing, and we learned on electric type-writers too! It's still a skill that I value to this day. I don't buy the argument that they don't need to teach it because every kid has a home computer or other devices. That's like saying all kids will learn piano well enough without lessons just by having one in their house.

In Jr. High and High School in the first half of the 1980s I took a one semester class each in typing. Both were electives. And my senior year I especially recall my English Lit teacher insisted that our papers must be done in "longhand." One student in my class who had a computer had to ask him permission to submit his papers printed out.

As someone who went to school in Pennsylvania who graduated from High School in 2008. One in a very rural area and was part of the largest graduating class at that time of 200 students (we were known as a farm school, as kids were bussed in to take Agricultural at our school). We were taught touch typing in early elementary school like maybe 1st or 2nd grade. I had 1/3rd of a semester of Latin in 8th grade where we had a semester broken into Latin/German/Spanish so we could decide what language we’d want to take in High School, I took 3 years of Spanish in High School. We were taught Darwinism and not taught creationism or anything religious as the separation of Church and State was huge and there was basically a zero tolerance policy as there would be some fanatic students from fanatic parents but they usually got kicked out by elementary or middle school. I took 3 years of Computer Science and CAD (Computer Aided Drafting) in high school as electives as I wanted to go a technical route, and went to college for Digital Forensics. Going back to college now for Electrical Engineering school is certainly more difficult with all of the digital resources vs physical ones. Our textbooks, discussions, homework, is all done digitally and the systems are horrible making the work take many times longer when you submit your assignment and the system glitches and you lose your progress and have to start over. Or worse you’re taking a test or exam and it’s only registered to accept an answer in a very specific manner which is either not clearly specified or doesn’t follow the specifications outlined in the question. I can’t tell you how many times in math courses I’ve follow the directions and gotten the answer incorrect despite it being the correct answer even according to the answer it said should have been correct (ex. Solve for x, answer as x=, submit x=35, incorrect the correct answer was 35… so despite giving the correct answer in the format they specified you get the question wrong because the person who programmed the answer didn’t follow the rules outlined by the question). Pearson and McGraw Hill are 2 of the largest publishers and the biggest problems at this. My College Algebra, Pre-Calc, Calc 1 & 2 all are guilty of this as they all used MyMath Lab of MyLab Math by Pearson. McGraw Hill for my Intro to Chem, Chem and Physics are also bad although their ALEKS system is THE WORST as it will reset your progress for incorrect answers usually due to vague questions and make your assignments take 3 times longer than it should. I feel like you spend more time trying to figure out how the software wants to work for that chapter than actually learning the material and concepts. Also the digital books many times would force you to answer questions correctly before you could proceed to the chapter to learn how to do the problems making learning extremely difficult as you would have to get a separate book or look up content just so you could learn the content. I feel like school has taken technology and shoved it down our throats without actually knowing if it will work or actually testing it on students unfamiliar with the content and learning it as a student. Also common core math is horrible and teaching this in school just shows me how far we’ve regressed since I was in school as a kid vs an adult. Our education system is flawed and broken, I’ve learned more from textbooks I bought on math and science from the 70’s than from the modern textbooks for my courses. I actually actively seek out old textbooks and read them first then read the new content to understand how the teacher will want the information presented but I actually learn the concepts and content from old textbooks with far better explanations and examples than modern textbooks which focus on random and often unimportant unfortunately skipping or glossing over the most important concepts for students who are learning this information without know everything first.

At my school in the 80's, our typing lab IBM typewriters keys had no labeling. You can also only type in Black or Red, so any typo was not removable.

I finished High School in 1978, just as the period where computers in people's homes stopped being a crazy idea. No one learned to type except in particular classes meant to prepare you for being a secretary. As I got into computers I never did learn to type properly and I have to say the idea that you evolve into a fast hunt and peck typist is right, but you still look at the keyboard a lot. In recent years I've gotten back into vintage keyboards and have made some progress towards touch typing and it's much more relaxing than what I had been doing. Great video as always Simon :D

I often wonder if kids are taught typing anymore. I had it for 3 years in elementary school. We used manual typewriters too, none of this fancy electricity.

12:30 as a German who studied Latin a year before beginning to study English I can confirm that 2/3 of the English vocabulary are Latin words. The other third is derived from German and for the grammar it's pretty much the other way around. I didn't have to learn a single new thing in my first 2 - 3 years of learning English because I had an exceptional Latin teacher who taught us not just the language itself, but also taught us to analyze hoe the language is made up, recognize the patterns and find parallels between the language we're learning and the language(s) we already know. Thanks to these skills, all the basics of English already felt familiar to me and memorizing them was a breeze.

I grew up in India, so-even though we follow the K-12 system-my schooling experience seems completely foreign to what Simon and Kevin are describing. All the teaching is focused on passing exams. It's not about learning anything or getting a well-rounded education or liberal crap like that. The ultimate goal being the highly competitive college entrance exams. We never wasted time studying anything that was off-syllabus. And did the minimum required for subjects like Physical Education, Music, Art etc.-which you just had to pass, but did not count towards your rank. Oh, and language education in Indian schools is a whole different barrel of worms. We don't have one default language-like English in England and America. Or two languages like Canada, or three like Belgium, or four like Switzerland. We have 22 official languages! (Latin isn't one of them.) So yeah, it's complicated.

I cannot touch type, despite it being something taught when I was a kid. However, in Year 7, our IT teacher took us out of the computer room and sat us in the corridor with a sheet with a blank keyboard on it and asked us to fill it out from memory. Then a week later we were to be given the same test again and if we were unable to fill in the keyboard, we would fail the class (or so we were told). Now, I can recite the keys on a keyboard to you almost perfectly from memory. And have a relatively decent typing speed. I write fanfiction and when doing races with other writers I almost always came first or second in such fun challenges. Even typing this out I can see my fingers going to where I know they need to be while I stare at the screen and fill in the words. Can even do so while looking entirely away from the computer and 'paying attention' to someone that felt the need to try actively talking to me while I was obviously doing something else that should require close attention. So this threat of failure seems to have worked far better than the year or two of touch typing training back in primary school. Only a couple of errors needed to be corrected here, and that is what I mostly use Grammarly for, to just highlight the errors so I can quickly correct them before hitting submit on the comment. I'm sure a proper touch typer could out do me for speed, but I usually manage to put down 1500-2000 words an hour when doing my morning writing work. And only occasionally need to focus on the keys to make sure I'm starting in the right spot before I start hammering away. Feels like a good medium setting between single finger typing and touch typing for me.