“A Man Convinced Against His Will…”

A good friend (senior, male), who is not a tutoring client, called me the other day. He is a proud self-made man who doesn’t seem to want any coaching, but wants to be computer literate without practicing or devoting any time to learning the skills. “Why should I take a class just to send e-mail?” Sound familiar?

He called to ask a favor. After considering options for a long time, he had decided to give up his dial-up connection to AOL and go broadband. He signed up for a self-install DSL program and had a kit from the phone company in hand. The only problem was that he did not know how to proceed from there. I’ve seen this kit several times. It comes with a detailed booklet that is strong on graphics and probably not more than a dozen words per page. A child could follow it.

My friend is a person who can rebuild a classic car from scratch or design a custom car that can win prizes. His house has beautifully restored artifacts such as a 100-year-old pristine barber chair, and a gasoline pump with a glass bowl at the top. It is likely from the 1920s. I didn’t ask if the pump works, but it probably does. His custom automobile paint jobs have appeared in magazines and on TV. He uses a computer routinely to compute estimates and to keep his books. With all this background demonstrating that he can learn things, and that he is moderately computer literate, why should he freeze at the thought of installing a DSL modem?

We made an appointment for me to come over on the weekend and spend the ten minutes or so it takes to set things up. Then he asked a strange question. “What’s all this “Yahoo!” stuff? It says that when I put the CD in, it will install some things like that. I just want my AOL to go faster.”

I explained to him what he had just signed a contract for, and assured him that if he wished to keep the training wheels on, he could continue to use AOL with the new connection, and it would get the benefits of broadband, but that he would have to continue to pay AOL for their services separate from his DSL contract. I even suggested that he do just that until he got familiar with life after AOL at which time he could cut loose from it if he wished.

But he interrupted in some distress. “You mean this stuff I got from the phone company is not the same as AOL?” Think about that question for a moment, and remember before answering that the questioner is a good friend. How do you frame an answer without being patronizing?

Starting from scratch, I explained to him again how the Internet works, what e-mail and browsers are, and how he could function with DSL. I suggested that there were even other alternatives available to him if he wished to stay with AOL but get the benefits of faster service. He listened without comment. We confirmed the appointment and hung up.

Two days later he called again. He told me not to bother to come over because he had sent the stuff back and he would stay with dial-up AOL because that is what he knows and he felt the sales representative at the phone company had sold him a bill of goods. “I don’t want to change my e-mail address” was his last comment on the situation.

Is this the best thing for him? Probably. My dead father’s warning flashed through my mind, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” My friend is comfortable with what he has, and at his own pace, he is continuing to learn new things. Why add frustration to his life by insisting that dial-up is a loser? The best thing for him is to have good examples of alternate ways of doing things available. Then when the time is ripe, he can make the switch if he wishes.

This little incident is another example of how tutoring for seniors requires more consideration to the person’s life experiences than one might need to be equally effective with a young student. But it is also a warning to others who have a difficult time keeping their natural desire to proselytize under control. Failure to keep yourself in check might result in having a smaller circle of friends.

For more in-depth tips on tutoring seniors, see the complete tutorial here. I also have posted a tutorial on elementary decision theory for those who might question a physician’s diagnosis (important for seniors) or anti-terrorist activities (important for everyone) but haven’t had the framework to analyze the data. That tutorial can be found here.