http://telegram.com/article/20080825/NEWS/808250465/1004/NEWS04

According to state standards, students in Grades 3 to 5 should be able to use various operating system features, demonstrate intermediate keyboarding skills, copy and paste text and images, perform simple searches of existing databases and import graphics onto a slide.

By the end of eighth grade, students should be able to keyboard 25 to 30 words per minute, troubleshoot minor hardware and software problems and independently operate scanners, digital cameras, camcorders, flash drives, school servers, probeware and online storage spaces. They should be able to create multimedia presentations, use e-mail functions, modify databases, and browse the Web.

High school students should be able to apply advanced formatting and page layout, use editing features and desktop publishing, “manipulate non-alphanumeric digital data,” explain metadata, create links among worksheets, create and use pivot tables, and to create, edit and publish “well-organized Web sites with effective navigation,” among other relatively advanced computer skills.

this is for Massachusetts... other states who knows...

Most adults don't even know these skills (trust me, as a software engineer I know because I get the calls from the friends/family/co-workers).  When I was in high school in the late '80s not only were computer skills entirely optional, but there was barely even enough technology in the schools to support the few students who did want to know this stuff.  My chemistry teacher actually railed against the school because her daughter started college and had no idea how to even turn a machine on, and it was already becoming expected that students in college would know how to use one for basic stuff.  In college I even had someone on my floor how typed his papers out on a manual typewriter.

I question the web site publishing requirement, I think that's becoming largely taken over by software.

This is soooooooooooooooooooooooooo retarded!! Why can't they leave things optional? What if one day all the computers in the world crash and we lose all the information? What ever happened to doing things on paper?

When I was in H.S. in the early 90s, learning the use of a computer wasn't mandatory.  Everything was DOS based, so you couldn't really do all the cool things that computers can do now.  We still had typewriters and the good ol' pen and paper to use in our classrooms

When I got into college, pretty much every class I had was computer based.  Some people were literally in tears because they didn't know how to use one.  Making it mandatory to learn computers in school is a good thing only because computers are everywhere and eventually everything in this world will be computer based, so basically if you don't know how to use one, you'll never survive in this world.  It's quite sad, but it's a strong possibility.  Within a few years, who knows how advanced technology will get.  The whole world could end up looking like TRON LOL

I was a high school student in the early '00s and it still wasn't mandatory to take any computer classes, at least not in my state. I chose to take the only one that was offered at my school, but it wasn't anything more advanced than learning how to use the basics of Power Point, Excel, Word, etc.

I wish all schools adopted that idea.  Almost all jobs these days require some use of the computer, there is just no way of avoiding it. 

Where do I enroll. I am fairly short, I may be able to pass for an elementary student.  ;D  ;D

I was a high school student in the early '00s and it still wasn't mandatory to take any computer classes, at least not in my state. I chose to take the only one that was offered at my school, but it wasn't anything more advanced than learning how to use the basics of Power Point, Excel, Word, etc.


In my high school that exact class was mandatory, and I dropped it  :D. I guess it was going to become obsolete by the following year though, since most kids my age knew how to use stuff like Word and Excel anyway.

In my high school that exact class was mandatory, and I dropped it  :D. I guess it was going to become obsolete by the following year though, since most kids my age knew how to use stuff like Word and Excel anyway.


R you kidding me? I know people in my grade (11th) that can program in Java and C#. And they arent even nerds or computer obsessed kids either.