Traditional character is not a must for Chinese who live in Mainland. But many of us can write a lot of Traditional characters, As for me, I'm very good at Traditional characters.

We don't learn it in class, but we recognize most traditional charaters. And more than half of the characters are same in traditional and simplified forms

and other than the taiwan people, hongkong/macau and some oversea chinese also use traditional characters. singapore/malaysia and some oversea chinese use simplied characters.

basically we don't learn it at school, unless if there is brush calligraphy class. but most of the young chinese don't have problem in reading the traditional characters , just have problem in handwriting. for me, the only problem with traditional characters is many books use it would put the characters in a perpendicular way, i'm used to read in the horizontal way, when i read perpendicular characters my reading speed suddenly slow down.

To most Chinese students(mainland),the answer is no.And I have never learnt any traditional charactors intentionally.But I have no diffeculty in reading an article written in traditional charactors.Because traditional charactors are still used in many cases.