I learned how to type when I was in high school. It was one of those "mother knows best" moments, since I was appalled by the concept (Secretaries Type!), but mother insisted. My typing teacher was hilarious. This was the seventies, and she was matronly, with a stentorian voice and tall, jiggling bun at the top of her head. It was a huge room, full of perhaps 50 typewriters, and she would walk back and forth at the front of the room, headset on, saying "a, a, a space, b, b, b space" and so forth.
Thinking back, the really horrifying thing is that this poor woman had to grade our typing papers every day. Can you imagine? That's right up there with being a can-checker at the soup company!
But she did. And we learned by rote. Training our fingers again and again and again.