Fleetwing,

As for my mother, she was determined to get off the farm and make something of herself. 
Living through some of the depression with nine brothers and sisters (and not all of them were filled with get-up-and-go) will do that to you. 

And to the typewriters...
I can't say for certain which machines she used at her work, *but* we had an old 1940's black Smith-Corona flat top around the house when I was growing up.  Although it looked brand-new, I suspect it was a typewriter that she bought through Chillicothe Business College as part of a student discount program.  Inside the typewriter's case was an ancient 1940's "How To Touch-Type" booklet that looked like part of the class materials.  You know, the red booklet with the typewriter keyboard laid out with circular keys on the cover, so you could "learn to touch type" without actually having to unnecessarily buy an expensive appliance in the 1930's.

Later, we got a Sears-brand of a Smith-Corona Electric.  Two of the keycaps and type bars' slugs were interchangeable for other letters or symbols.  Mom was practically giddy with delight that she had an *electric* typewriter at home.

I recall that one of her jobs had the then-new IBM Selectric machines, the one with the interchangeable "golf ball" typeface element. She hated it.  She never got used to the delay between the keypress and the ball rising up, rotating, and striking the page.  (I guess it threw her off her groove, man.)

At one of the places where she worked, she had a boss that insisted on every typed page had to have NO errors and NO erasures and NO correction fluid.  She was the only one in the office that could do that using only one sheet.  At speeds exceeding 90 words per minute.

Me?  I'm lucky to do 40 WPM.  I had a Smith-Corona Sterling during my college days, and did my term papers and thesis on it.   I stupidly loaned it to a friend one day, and that was the last I saw of it. 

I now have 2-1/2 Smith-Coronas:
Smith-Corona Skyriter s/n: 2Y 96760   (1952 Pica machine),
Smith-Corona Skyriter s/n: 2Y 183924  (1953 Elite machine), and
Smith-Corona Skyriter s/n: 2Y 69784    (1951 Pica "parts" machine).

It keeps me in the game...

Fleetwing wrote:

And you seem to have a thing for Skyriters! I got one in the spring (British made) and it's very nice, I have to say.

Nobody asked me, but: SkyRiters have nearly a perfect touch to me - solid, slightly resisting, with the satisfying accumulation of energy under your finger stroke until the slug strikes the paper, with notes of nutmeg. Just kidding about the nutmeg. To me they have even better actions than the larger line of Smith Corona portables which while very respectable seem slightly more pedestrian.

I never used a Selectric long enough or perhaps I was not fast enough to notice the lag, but sometimes very noticeable on electronic typewriters which can be very disconcerting. I imagine even more disconcerting to a very fast typist used to manuals. I've noticed something similar on an IBM C Executive which seems to lag the keyboard slightly, though not sure if a feature of the breed or if this particular one just needed more cleaning. The Executive is a lovely machine but I never really took to it - the inhuman precision of its imprint discouraged casual use.

zoom wrote:

So my conclusion is that online instruction is providing all of which young people need.

Online or virtual education is to my mind a poor substitution for direct interaction with others, not just a teacher, but classmates as well.

I'm alarmed by the education trends in my province, and the resultant rise of functional illiteracy. It seems that the majority of millennials who grew up with their noses firmly pressed into tablets, smartphones, and computers have very poor communication skills and are unable to create a grammatically correct sentence.

Our schools no longer teach cursive, which demonstrates an astounding and disturbing reliance on technology.

This reminds me of the effect that idiot-proofing in modern cars is having on the average driver and how it erodes basic driving skills. Once cars become fully automated, the skill required to safely operate a vehicle will have become lost altogether.