It reminds me of the 'IT Literacy' classes we had when I was in high school where they just taught us to use Microsoft Office products.

A lot of those were definitely sponsored by MS and co as well, but at least you did learn a practical, transferable, morph-able skill. You'll come out of that with experience using the features and structures of a general purpose OS, as well as the workflow of mode-base production software (in some cases). Excel at least is also just such a powerful 'everything' tool that I'm not even that mad about it.

'AI Literacy' is just very much not that at all and is just state-mandated brain rot.

We had the same requirement at my high school in Sacramento back in the early 2000s. I was given the option to test out of it, since I already knew how to use Office, which I had been using at home since fifth grade for reports and presentations. I had to study harder for Excel and Access, since most high school students don’t need sophisticated spreadsheets or databases, but I passed the exam on my first attempt.

A far better computer literacy course was the one I took at Sacramento City College as a dual-enrollment student in summer 2004, which was the prerequisite to programming courses. Even though I already knew how to program in QBASIC, Visual Basic 6 and C++, I still had to take this course. Anyway, we learned very basic computer architecture (the roles of the CPU, memory, storage, buses, etc.), the role of the operating system and the difference between it and applications, computer networking, the Web (with an introduction to HTML and CSS), the history of computing, and a brief introduction to programming, with exercises in C++ and even Scheme (the professor showed us his copy of SICP and threatened students who talked during his lectures with Scheme homework assignments).

It was a fun class. The professor knew I was a Linux fan, but I had a hard time downloading a distro at home due to my having dial-up. He gave me some FreeBSD install CDs. I became a fan of FreeBSD since, and exploring FreeBSD led me down a rabbit hole where I devoured the history of Unix and BSD. By the time I graduated from high school, I wanted to be a systems software researcher like Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. This shaped my early career; I’ll never forget meeting Marshall Kirk McKusick my senior year of college at USENIX FAST 2009.

Turned out that computer literacy course I was required to take at Sacramento City College despite having computer literacy had far-reaching impacts in my life.

One of the bright lights of that class was knowing how to bring up the "Flight Sim" easter egg in Excel.

Any sort of "X Literacy" raises red flags for me. Actual _literacy_ - as in, being able to critically read and comprehend stuff of sufficient complexity - is basically a superpower that makes learning all these other skills possible, and it seems to be in terribly short supply.

I had the same experience in the UK around 2005 to 2011, I wonder if it's the same everywhere?

I feel that my experience was far worse and bordering on the absurd and bureaucratic. We spent years following instructions, taking screenshots of us opening specific windows and dialogs in Office etc, saving all these screenshots into a Word document, and then printing the document.

To be clear, it was every single action you took. Moved the mouse to "Insert"? Don't click it yet, take a screenshot of your mouse on the "Insert" button, and then click it, and take a screenshot of the menu that opened. Then, take more screenshots of moving your mouse to buttons and lists in dialogs that opened. Then, take a screenshot of the document with the thing you just inserted.

Now, write several paragraphs in detail about what you just did. Print everything, and that includes both the document you just created for the exercise and then the document writing about the document creating exercise with all it's dozens of screenshots.

Each individual printed piece of paper needed to be kept in a plastic wallet, which was then kept in document folder. In the end we had multiple of these document folders that were without a doubt a complete waste of paper and time.

The argument was that it was needed in case the exam board decided it needed to double check the teachers scores, which I think never happened once anyway. There was never once a reason given for why each individual piece of paper needed to be put in a plastic wallet.

This was during a period of time where CS education at schools had essentially totally vanished from the curriculum for decades, it was added back after I'd finished school.

Words cannot describe how much I despised the entire ordeal. There simply are not enough words to describe the total absurdity of an IT class requiring screenshots of clicking buttons and being printed onto paper.

While the teacher was trying to explain how to add PowerPoint transitions I was writing scripts that would fetch currency conversions and graph them because I was that bored. One time I write some terrible "chat" system via some type of free shared HTML/PHP hosting and meta tag based auto refreshing of the chat history for a few class friends to talk across the room.

Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing

Logo, MS Office, Counter-Strike 1.0-1.6, PHP, War§ow, Quake, ..

01010101 0123456789ABCDEF AND OR XOR, ..

It sounds like you actually learned something in your class, though?