I'm a learner driver in Europe and I'm choosing to only learn to drive an automatic. I'm not going to own a car, I'm only going to use company cars (full fleet is electric) and maybe rent a car very occasionally, and all the cheap rentals are electric these days. I don't expect to rent a car more than once a year seeing as I've succesfully lived for 31 years without a driver's license. In almost all cases it's cheaper to get large stuff delivered rather than rent a car to pick it up and everyone I visit lives near major transit hubs. If it wasn't for my job I would never have gotten a license.
I could spend a ton of extra money to also learn how to drive and get a license for a manual car, but it's 2021, chances of me ever getting into a situation where I would need to drive a stick car are so low that it's simply not worth spending the extra €500 or so in lessons. 10 years from now petrol cars have probably disappeared.
I was going to say that learning to drive stick is a valuable life skill, then realized I would sound like the people who thought that "slipstick" (sliderule*) skills would always be valuable.
"What about when the batteries die" -- a semi-valid concern for early electronic calculators
I lost, then refound my 1st college calculator many year later, and it still worked on 8+ year old batteries. My grad school calculator (30 years ago) still works on the 1st battery replacement.
*I now realize that I have to put in the definition of slderule
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/slide+ruleHowever, hearing the stories of USA colleagues who didn't know stick driving before picking up a car in Paris are priceless-kostenlos for me, very pricey for Avis France :-) **
Downshifting from 5th to 2nd at over 110km/hr (70mph) on the Autoroute (Freeway, Autobahn)
Not knowing how to get into reverse (VW, pull up on gearswitch, then place in reverse) at the wrong Autoroute toll booth lane and having to manually push the car back far enough to get into the correct lane.
Parking on slope (me). Result, one stone marker forward knocked over, one tree behind bashed into.
I only had 5 or so CAR stick experiences before trying to follow a colleague out of Paris CDG Terminal 2 at an excessive speed. I had been riding motorcycles (almost all of which were manual) so I had a good grasp (no pun intended) of clutch operation.
**I'm sure Avis France shudders when a certain well known US logo on a shirt shows up at the counter. If not, they should. Many stories of destruction beyond just stick misuse.
But they got us one time, since we were Americans and they assumed automatic only, which pushed the price range way up. A colleague and I got a Citron C6 -- very nice car, good enough for the French President
https://automobile.fandom.com/wiki/State_Limousines_of_France, good enough for us. The bean counters were enraged that we accepted a Euro6000/month car.