ABSTRACT
I recently had an opportunity to, within a week’s time, teach both a Mojahedin from Afghanistan and a 77-year-old American woman how to use instant cash cards with a personal banking machine. It is worth saying parenthetically that both the Afghan man and the American woman might have been the teachers in another setting: One could provide instruction in, say, operating a rocket launcher or cutting the throat of a Russian soldier (he has done both); the other could relate lessons that were learned from living through the Depression and the war years. Both of them were in an informal learning setting, eager to acquire a skill that might add to life’s convenience. Any apprehension they had over the technology was overcome by their expectation of success. And, indeed, both did succeed in a very few minutes. The process of adult education was identical for both the younger man and the older woman, and it involved principles of mutual respect, patience, and learning by doing. John Dewey would have been proud. Educational gerontology in this instance was no different than adult learning at any age.
