But the keyboard won't fit in my pocket!

Apparently a large number of high school students in Japan graduate without learning how to use a PC. Shocked? I certainly was. Japan, the home of technological innovation. I would have thought that the population would have been banging away on computers since they were toddlers.

So, what’s the trouble? Why in a country such as Japan are they facing this problem? It appears that Internet usage on mobile phones is so common that many younger people in Japan are not using computers anymore.

I can understand it is probably a lot more convenient for them to use their phones to search the web, but what I don’t understand is why they are not using computers during school and for their schoolwork. I did when I was at school and I live in a country which is far behind Japan in technological terms, plus, that was a few years ago now.

The big problem obviously is that students are going into the working world and in many cases that means using computers on a daily basis. And typing with only your thumbs would be fairly difficult I imagine. Fine for a phone, but not for a keyboard.

As I commented on Stan’s blog (where I found this surprising piece of information), perhaps school children in Japan should be given extra computing classes if this is proving to be such a problem. That’s assuming however that they already receive computing lessons. As I am unfamiliar with the Japanese curriculum I do not know whether computing is a part of their core learning. If it is not however, it should be.

Yes, technology is moving at an incredible rate, but computers have been around for many years and don’t look set to be completely replaced any time in the near future. I think it’s time for the kids of Japan to go ‘Old skool’ and embrace the PC once again.