I was in a workshop the other day, waiting whilst a mechanic punched the details of my warrant of fitness into the computer. I say waiting because the fellow was so slow on the computer it would have almost been quicker to send a letter to Land Transport.
And then another mechanic came along to an adjacent computer to order some parts and he too had appalling keyboard skills. And it made me think – why don’t we insist that all pupils at school do a full typing course. Our whole world is dominated by computers and yet most of us have little or no fluent keyboard skills.
Not one of my kids is a typist. Yet the policeman spends half his life taking statements or typing reports on a computer. The public affairs advisor spends a large part of his day preparing presentations and speeches on a computer and the specialist cardio thoracic nurse keeps all medical and treatment records on a computer.
It is a fact that in virtually every walk of life keyboard skills are required and yet they are not routinely taught in our schools.
And speaking of failures in our education system – we don’t teach financial prudence – saving and investment – in our schools either.
We are constantly being told, and rightly so, that New Zealanders need to increase productivity and to save more. But we don’t teach people how to save and, in the absence of a compulsory scheme like Australia has, we need to educate people.
My two youngest who are currently resident in Melbourne are typical young people. They want all the latest gadgets and cars – I don’t know where they get that from – and they tend to spend what they earn. But they do so in the knowledge that 9% of their wages has been extracted from their pay packets before they get their hands on them, and that money is invested in a superannuation scheme for their retirement. Not a bad idea – in fact I have real sympathy for a compulsory super scheme for New Zealand.
We need to do something. In the last three quarters of a century, life expectancy has increased by 40%. Today we have 4.5 workers for every superannuatant, in 25 years time there will only be 2.2 workers for every superannuatant.Â
Simply put that’s an unsustainable model.
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August 20th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Greetings Bill
Absolutely right on the typing issue. In an earlier life, around the age of 18, I was taught to type. No choice, it was part of the job. Then, having no use for it for many years, I became very rusty. With the advent of computers I now find it was probably the best skill I ever acquired. It has given me the power to annoy politicians and the like on a very regular basis, which, incidentally, is also the very core of democracy, in case anyone has forgotten.