Is it compulsary to learn touch tying in America? Is there any other country this applies to?

Touch typing means being able to type comfortably without looking at your hands or the keys. In most schools here, it is taught as a class. I don't think it's absolutely mandatory to get by in life, but it does make things much easier. It's not hard to learn and comes in handy, especially if you're at a computer a lot.

The actual typing class was not compulsary, but if you took typing, it was required that you learn to touch type.

Of course that was when it was still "typing", not "keyboarding". :)

Chickadeedee, ''touch typing'' is typing withOUT looking looking at the keyboard, paper, or screen. That way one can do other things while typing, such as keeping an eye on your boss, or the people that want to talk or yell at him. I too didn't ever learn it in Ireland (but to be honest, my school in Ireland was so crude that the only thing like it was ''touch plowing'').
It wasn't until long after I became a teenager in the U.S and went to High school there, (you know, same time as Abe Lincolin) that ''touch typing'' became compulsary in most High Schools in the U.S., and BOY, did THAT cause an uproar! Why? Well, because everyone was suppose to do it, all the boys and girls, and THAT is what caused the uproar.. the BOYS doing it.

See, back in the time when Geo. Washington and I used to try to peek into the windows of the showers after girls P.E., only girls and WOMEN were taught ''touch typing'' along with cooking. Since almost every secretary in the world at that time were women, it was thought that they were the ONLY ones that needed it, or would need it. Because of that, a boy taking typing or cooking was considered a little ''odd'', and life was Hell for any MALE student taking one or the other ( I, having no shame, took both during High School. My father pulled strings to get me into both. He wanted me to take the touch typing because, as he put it, '' Sometimes you want something printed that even your secretary shouldn't read..or testify later about..'' Cooking? ''Cooks rarely die of starvation.'' For once I agreed with him, especially after I saw some of the girls in the cooking classes. The boys and men laughed at me, but the girls laughed WITH me; many, often, and sometimes, late at night.. I loved high school..)
There are still a lot of nations (and states) that refuse to make any type of typing class compulsary because it would have to include MEN and women. The poor fools. The poor sad LONELY fools..

I learned it in college.

I don't know about now, but when I was in High school, we had to do it- it was compulsory...