I�ve taught an adult-child class for several years. It�s not one of those tot music classes or kindergym. No, it�s a beginning prayer-book Hebrew class and most of the adults struggle as much as the kids and maybe more. Over time, I�ve learned a few things about the differences between adult learners and child learners and biggest difference is not what I would have guessed. I would have guessed that biggest difference would be that the adults would pay more attention. They don�t necessarily and there�s nothing more fun to kids than to watch me threaten to re-seat their mothers if they can�t stop talking. No, the biggest difference it that the adults learners usually underestimate their skills while the children usually overestimate them.

The overestimation of their skills seems to give the children an advantage over the adults. Confidence does count. The kids will attack almost any page and try to read it. The adults will make the correct sounds quietly and then tell me that they can�t read the word. The kids read ten words in the time it takes many of the adults to get out one or two. At the beginning of the year the adults are more accurate but that advantage doesn�t last. By the middle of the year, the kids usually are equally accurate and much quicker.

I wish I knew why the adults so consistently underestimate their skills in my class. I know some of them outside of class and I have not had the feeling that, in general, they underestimate their skills. The difference seems to be the presence of the children. When I first observed the phenomenon, I thought it was a pretense for the sake of the children. That theory seemed to make some sense when I observed that every year I had at least one father-son pair locked in educational competition and that the father of that pair rarely had the problem. But the theory doesn�t hold up, at least not unless the behavior gets ingrained as a pattern. When I get the adults alone, out in the hall, far away from the kids, and I have them read to me, the same lack-of-confidence problem occurs.

Despite the mystery, everyone seems to get more than Hebrew out of the class. There is something magical about watching parents and children learning side by side, struggling with the same task. The kids get to see adults working at learning. They get to watch adults showing that they get frustrated and showing how frustration can be handled. The adults get something more too. They get to see that other parents have similar problems. They get opportunities to talk about values and God and other topics that many parents seem to have some trouble broaching with third graders.

Although I love the teaching, I think this is my last year for a while. I have the time on Sunday morning to teach the class. What I don�t have is adequate time for preparation. As work has gotten busier and busier, preparation time is beginning to take away from time with my own kids.

So, I have until the end of the year to solve this mystery of adult learners but this study may turn out to be part of a serial and not a novel�and unfortunately I�ve decided that I do not have the time to come back next year and see how it turns out. I usually understand children reasonably well (as long as they are not my own) but I don�t understand adults. But what else is new? I never did understand my peers.

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