If you teach it they won't come

In my line o' work, I have 12 seats to fill three times a week in a computer lab at the local public library. When I started out five years ago, I filled them five to eight times a week, teaching how to use Windows 2000, and the basic how-tos about Microsoft Office programs. Now, into the sixth year, there are evident signs that I've done a good job: five people will sign up and two will come. And sometimes one of them won't have signed up for the class.

Of course it's possible that I've just become old, doddering and tiresome. Some days I really am tired, and it's hard to work up the enthusiasm of youth. But on a normal day, teaching is still what I like to do, because over the years, I think I have evolved from the sage on the stage to the guide on the side.

There's a wonderful social side to all this, too. Some of my "students" have attended over 100 classes (in a few cases almost 200). They haven't mastered the computer, but they love to forgather and "learn something new every day".

Personally, I think they learn the most from each other. Some classes begin with one of them talking about something that they've just recently learned, or something that has happened to them, or someone they know. One gentle former teacher hands out vitamin C candies to anyone who wants them. And if one of them has a bout of hospitalization, they all want to know the details. This is not an ordinary class. Where else could you have someone talking about rehabilitating a goldfish that got speared by a great blue heron in a garden pond and can't swim because of a punctured swim bladder, and then everyone looks up Ardea herodias and becomes an instant expert on the subject?

I've been told that the attendance issue would be resolved if the library charged, say, $10 a class, refundable if you show up. No doubt it would be. Nobody would come. Many of the people who attend can't afford that money, because they're out of work, and the reason they're enrolled with me is that they hope to learn enough about spreadsheets to compete on the job market with the hundreds of twenty-somethings who have grown up with computers. Some have worked for thirty years of loyal office drudgery only to be downsized, laid off and not qualified for the kind of computer work that involves knowing Office and other programs. Windows is a mystery to them.

One older woman attended about eight classes before she sold her computer. But her daughter wouldn't let her off so easily. The lady showed up again a year later for another few sessions because her daughter got wind of the situation and gave her a computer for Christmas.

Most of my seniors would agree that you can't learn from a relative. My wife has learned not to ask me too many questions for exactly that reason: I'm the soul of patience with the library crowd, but I become short-fused when I have to come home and work through similar stuff with my nearest and dearest. I'm not sure why that is, but it's typical.

When I ask my students if they have anyone who can help them with their home computer, they'll say, "Oh, yes, my son/daughter installed the whole thing for me, but then, you know, they said 'You just press this and click that and move this over here and you'll be fine'. And you know, I STILL don't know how to get on the Internet or do email."

Some of the job seekers actually end up taking whatever I'm able to give them initially, and going off to a community college to do more detailed work. But for most of the rest of us, I suspect that the computer eventually begins to gather dust like an old doily, and when they pass on, the offspring dispose of the computer rather than being burdened by it.

Well, in the Cincinnati area at least, there is the Cincinnati Computer Consortium, and they recycle the old stuff so that eventually nobody will have to teach seniors how to use a computer. And, apart from the loss of social contact and interaction, that might be a good thing. When you're over 65, it's not necessarily fun to learn all this new technology, but it does open up possibilities for your declining years that may just keep you interested, and therefore alive. And that is a good thing.