A client asked how she would know when she had learned enough. Now that made me think a bit! When has an instructor finished helping a senior become computer literate?

We have all kinds of rites of passage: scholastic ones such as high school graduation ceremonies; calendar-based rites such as being able to vote, get drafted, or qualify for lower cost car insurance; and performance based rites such as a retirement party. The various religions all have well-defined rites. Most of them have formal ceremonies for transitioning from childhood to adulthood. All of them have some formal ceremonies to mark forming a union of man and wife. We even have rites to be sure that a person has died and been remembered appropriately.

But what is the rite of passage from middle age into seniority? Would getting a postcard from AARP count? Should we measure from the first Social Security check? How about the arrival of your first grandchild? And once we establish that we are seniors, how do we mark the accomplishment of achieving computer literacy?

This is not trivial. I have seen cap and gown ceremonies to mark to end of kindergarten and starting of elementary education. If we recognize such things, why not recognize the effort a senior makes to learn late in life the skills that our young people are picking up in from the air they breathe - like catching the flu or acne?

Even our local senior center lacks a standard certificate to recognize when a student has mastered the fundamentals. So how do we know when they have learned enough?

Well, maybe the question is not well posed. My client was probably asking when she knew enough to stop taking lessons and go out on her own. To answer to her that the decision is up to her would be to ignore a basic human motivation. We might all say that various rites and ceremonies and certificates are shallow exercises, but we keep the pictures and videos. If rites and ceremonies were not important, they would fade away in the normal course of things.

On a different note, I bet some of the readers of this column have become Microsoft certified something or another, and that they never use that certification. So why get it?

Is there some rational way that we can put a stick in the ground and say, “By the authority invested in me, you are hereby declared to be a computer literate senior grade 4b for having passed the age 55 without knowing how to send an e-mail, but rectifying that lamentable lack through hard work and diligent study, culminating in your successful performance on standard test blah-blah-blah…?” And if there were, would it be worthwhile?

Of course, I am not seriously advocating the establishment of such arbitrary rites. However, that simple question has acted to raise my consciousness to my duty to be more communicative with clients in telling them what are reasonable levels of proficiencies to strive for, and to let them know where I think they are along the path to those goals.

Ultimately your clients will decide when they know enough, they will be better able to make that decision if they understand the spectrum of performance and where they lie in it.

When have you learned enough? Well, maybe when you stop asking for help. By that standard, I am a long way from having learned enough.

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.