I remember my typing and secretarial classes at school – quite a few moons ago now. Things were definitely done a completely different way then. We had plenty of teachers and they knew how to control a class – looking back on those few years, I can see how lucky I was to be schooled in the old way. Knowing boundaries and have clear guidelines of the teacher’s expectations of me counted for a lot. I’m not sure I would have had the self discipline to buckle down and work in the same way today’s student has to. There is a greater emphasis on working at home, with laptop logged onto the school system. Independence is being drummed into the student.
Our typing and secretarial lessons were very much tutor led. Mrs H would contenance no cheating – we had to learn to type without looking at either the keyboard or the resultant words on the page. Of course we did not have a screen in front of us – it was paper coming out of the typewriter roller. The art of copy typing is one that has died out, any tom, dick or harry can stab away with two fingers darting across the keyboard of their laptop and think they’re typing. But there is so much more to getting those words down on a page or message! For someone to be totally successful in the world of typing for any commercial venture is to learn to copy type. That is to know the qwerty keyboard off by heart and to take lessons on English grammar, vocabulary and most importantly – knowing punctuation and its uses. All these are taught in e-learning courses.