Learning in Later Life

An Introduction for Educators and Carers

Peter Jarvis

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135379896
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Education
• Categoría: Education General

An analysis of learning throughout the whole of life. Written as a text for both educators and carers, it demonstrates how the learning process works through life and how learning at all stages of life is best achieved.

1

Learning and third age education

This is an ageing society – it is widely accepted now that in Western Europe and the United States, amongst other places, the older population comprises an ever increasing proportion of the whole. Demographics indicate that the population in the United Kingdom is ageing and that by the year 2001, 15 million people will fall within the age group 50–74 years and a further 4.4 million will be 75 years plus. Significantly, only 12.6 million will be under 16 years old and 27.1 million will be between 16 and 49 years old (Annual Abstract of Statistics, cited from Carnegie Inquiry, 1993, p 115). Consequently, it may be seen that third agers (those between 50 and 74 years) constitute a significant proportion of the population. A similar phenomenon may be detected throughout Europe and the United States. Sheehy (1995) actually regards 50 years old as the beginning of second adulthood! It is upon this age group that this study concentrates, with ‘elder’ being defined as being 50 years of age and older. It is also the age at which many companies begin to invite employees to consider early retirement – and enter the third age.

It is not to be denied that for many elders, the third age has become a time of leisure – even if it has sometimes been enforced! Significantly, employment and economic activity rates for older workers (those aged 55 to 64) have fallen over the past 20 years. Indeed, in the United Kingdom approximately 91.3 per cent of all men were economically active in 1971, but by the year 1988 it was only 68.4 per cent (OECD [Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development] cited from Carnegie Inquiry, 1993, p 19), and it was still decreasing. By contrast, economic activity among older women has increased, but only in part-time work.

In the United States there are now more people over 65 years of age than there are teenagers. Even an ex-President of the United States can write a book on The Virtues of Aging (Carter, 1998). But this is also a learning society, and the number of educational institutions for older adults is increasing much more rapidly than is the number of schools! Indeed, in the Finnish European Union Presidency Seminar in 1999, third age learning was regarded as one of the eight major educational issues to be discussed.

Learning in later life has become something of a catchphrase in recent years and there is an assumption that it relates in some way to third age education. Government documents certainly seem to include third age education within its strategy for making the United Kingdom a learning society. The way in which this assumption is made is challenged in this book, although I certainly do not want to deny that third age education is a part of learning in later life. Learning occurs in formal, non-formal and informal situations — something we shall discuss more thoroughly in the second chapter. Education, however, is learning in a formal situation but does not include learning in other life situations. In this sense, the study of third age education is both a sub-discipline of education for adults and also of gerontology, and in this chapter the focus is on the manner in which educational gerontology has emerged and how it relates to the education of adults. Thereafter, we shall examine the learning processes and how they relate to later life in general. Naturally, this will include considerable reference to adult education both in the UK and in the United States, where there have been many innovations in later life learning.

As early as 1962, the Institute for Retired Professionals was founded in New York under the sponsorship of the New School for Social Research and this became the first Institute for Learning in Retirement, which has subsequently become the Elderhostel Institute Network. Ten years later, the University of the Third Age was founded in Toulouse, in France, and these universities have spread very rapidly throughout Europe and around the rest of the world. At the International Association of Third Age Universities (AIUTA), meeting in Germany in 1998, there were representatives from 18 different countries. Other networks and groups have also appeared more recently, including TALIS (Third Age Learning International Studies) and two journals exist devoted to the study of third age education.

Older people are undertaking learning opportunities in considerable numbers and the study of their education, educational gerontology, is also beginning to emerge. It might be viewed as part of the wider study of lifelong learning, or even more specifically as a sub-section of the study of the education of adults. Indeed, it is suggested here that third age education is a mirror of non-vocational adult education a generation ago and we shall trace this through this chapter, which is divided into three sections: the emergence of education for adults; changing fields of study; third age education. The chapter then concludes by focusing upon learning rather than on education.

The emergence of education for adults

There are many comprehensive histories of adult education (Harrison, 1961, Kelly, 1970, Fieldhouse, 1996 for the UK, Knowles, 1977 and Kett, 1994 for the United States, inter alia) and so it is not my intention to provide a full overview of the way that adult education emerged in the UK, the United States or anywhere else. Nevertheless, it is necessary to focus upon some aspects of this development in order to illustrate the thesis of this chapter.

As general education developed after the Enlightenment, children were schooled to receive that knowledge which the older generation considered sufficiently valuable to be passed on to the succeeding generation. Education was, in fact, defined by Emile Durkheim (1956, p 71) as ‘the influence exercised by adult generations on those who are not yet ready for social life’. For most children, their education was completed in their teenage years, although a minority continued their initial education to the end of their university career. Vocational training, or education, followed immediately after initial education and young people entered employment. At this point, all education terminated. There was little vocational training after the initial preparation. Indeed, at this time there was a general belief that adults could not learn a great deal more, since it was widely believed that mental decline set in by the time individuals had reached their middle twenties.

However, people gradually began to realize that adults could actually continue to learn (see Knox, 1977 for a summary of this research). The emergence of adult education was, therefore, a totally new phenomenon in as much as it was not connected in any way with initial education or vocational training. There was a clearly demarcated boundary between them. Adult education was distinct and assumed a non-vocational perspective. Much of the early adult education was religious in nature (Kelly, 1970). It was also optional and voluntary, non-accredited and, by and large, a middle-class leisure time pursuit. The middle classes had the necessary educational background and cultural capital to continue their education. In addition, since it was non-vocational it appeared to be a pursuit that was undertaken by those who were not in employment, so that women predominated in adult education classes. There was also a genuine concern about seeking to reach out to those who did not come to adult education classes and attract them to classes. It had many of the characteristics of a social movement with a strong mission to offer knowledge to those who were not so well educated. It assumed many of the characteristics of an idealistic enterprise ‘learning for learning’s sake’. However, like initial education and vocational training, it merely reproduced the social and cultural conditions of the day. Additionally, like initial education (eg Bowles and Gintis, 1976), it was criticized for its inherendy conservative nature, and later more radical adult educators emerged, pointing out that education is never neutral and always manifests itself as a political phenomenon (eg Freire, 1972). Other radical and feminist forms of adult education were also espoused -see Keddie (1980) and Thompson (1983).

The academic study of the education of adults also emerged during this period, with the first professor of adult education being appointed at Nottingham University in 1920 and the first PhD in adult education being awarded to Basil Yeaxlee by the University of London in 1925. Eleven years later, Teachers College, Columbia University, was to award the first PhD in adult education in the United States. By the 1960s and 1970s, the study of adult education was becoming established in both countries and once this had occurred, the training of adult educators as distinct from the preparation of school teachers began to appear. But just as this was happening other changes were to occur that were to have profound changes on adult education.

It was in the 1960s and 1970s that changes in the nature of society were emerging. Stehr (1994, pp 5–17) provides an overview of some of the theories of the development of the knowledge society. The significance of this is quite profound for the structure of work, since Reich (1991) suggests that in the 1950s there were probably no more than 8 per cent of the US workforce that might be classified as knowledge workers but, by the time he wrote his book, this proportion had increased to 20 per cent. And it would continue to increase. But as this process has continued, so there has been a great demand for knowledge workers to gain more knowledge, often through in-service courses initially, but also by returning to education in order to gain further qualifications. Other occupations have also changed and new ones have emerged, and these changes have completely transformed the socio-economic class structure of contemporary society. With all these developments, further education and training has also become more necessary, and human resource development has become a fashionable term. Consequently, there has been a tremendous expansion of higher education and higher education for further qualifications. Indeed, Campbell (1984, p 14) notes that ‘in 1974–75, adult learners in credit and formal non-credit courses in Canada became the new majority within the universities’ clientele’.

However, this process has been exacerbated by globalization, since countries now have to compete in a world market to produce an increasing number of products to sell competitively on the world stage. This competitive climate has resulted in a continued increase in knowledge workers and also other structural changes in employment — a career, for many people, is no longer progression in the same occupation until retirement. Jobs are changing – new jobs are appearing and increasingly new forms of training are being introduced and, significantly, these have occurred throughout the whole of the work life. In addition, individuals without employment need the opportunity to be trained in order to be able to return to work – and unemployment education has become a major welfare provision in many Western societies.

Vocational education was now no longer something that occurred at the start of a career, but something that continued throughout the whole of the working life. Government reports now emphasize the significance of knowledge for work. For instance, the European Union’s report on the learning society (1995, p 3) specified the ‘need for a broad knowledge base... designed to build up abilities for employment’. While the report also recognized the significance of general education, its emphasis was primarily on knowledge for employment.

In the United Kingdom, as expenditure on the welfare state has been curtailed, so the quite generously funded adult education of the 1970s has been restricted. Now non-vocational adult education courses are funded differently, if at all, from vocational education. The Kennedy Report (1997, pp 33—34) recognized this difference, although it pleaded for more equal recognition, and in the more recent White Paper (1999), Learning to Succeed, this was recognized. However, many subjects that were once classified as non-vocational and were non-accredited have now been reclassified as vocational and accredited, so that funding can be sought and enrolment fees kept lower.

Thus we can see that, with the emergence of the knowledge society and the process of globalization, the nature of vocational education has changed. What was previously education and training of young people before they entered the workforce has become education for the whole of the work life. While the more traditional forms of non-vocational adult education remain, they have become marginalized in adulthood. At the centre of education of adults at the end of the twentieth century is vocational adult education. General adult education is being marginalized, and those more radical formulations of adult education even more marginalized (where they have not disappeared altogether) even though there may be an even greater need for them now than ever before.

Significantly, and almost ironically, as work has become the centre of many people’s lives, to such an extent that some individuals appear to have allowed it to pervade the whole of their lives, people are living a lot longer. There is now a need for preparation for the long leisure years that confront retirees. Pre-retirement education courses have become increasingly popular, helping people to prepare for their leisure time and also helping them to consider the significance of life beyond work. Many of these have worked with knowledge for much of their working lives so that they are likely candidates for post-retirement education. But before we look at education for those who have retired, it is necessary to return to the study of the education for adults since it is there that we can trace these changes most clearly.

Changing fields of study

As we review these historical developments, we can see that the fields of study of the education of adults have also changed, and that academic debates have ensued. For instance, in the early days of adult education, it was something quite different from other forms of education – indeed, the prefix ‘adult’ was sufficient to demarcate it from education. However, as early at 1929 the term ‘lifelong education’ put in its first appearance (Yeaxlee, 1929) — but it did not gain popularity in the inter-war years. Even though UNESCO adopted the concept after the Second World War with far-sighted thinkers like Lengrand (1975) and members of the OECD promulgating the idea, the time was not really right for the concept to be adopted. The idea of a boundary between school education and adult education was still too strong.

However, in the 1970s, that boundary was being breached and the idea was emerging of continuing education, and by the mid-1980s in the United Kingdom the concept of adult education was subsumed within continuing education. At first there was a sub-division between continuing education and continuing professional education but, as we have seen above, non-vocational education was marginalized and continuing education became dominated by continuing vocational education. However, continuing education was not to retain its prevalence for long because by the 1990s, the idea of lifelong education was rediscovered. But the focus of this was also to change – for society had become a globalized market and education itself was being commodified. This commodification process had been speeded up by the introduction of distance education and information technology. Now the emphasis was on learning and it became possible to purchase learning materials – and so the focus became learning and the dominant concept lifelong learning, since learners no longer needed the formalized educational system in order to learn.

Naturally, learning in later life fits nicely into the idea of lifelong learning and it might appear that it has been accepted without a great deal of difficulty. But this has not been the case, as is illustrated from the terminological debate of the period.

In the 1960s, when Malcolm Knowles (1970) first popularized the idea of andr-agogy in the United States, he sub-titled his book ‘Andragogy versus Pedagogy’ reflecting the clear-cut distinction between the two forms of education. But this was immediately disputed by some scholars, so that in the revised edition the subtitle became ‘From Pedagogy to Andragogy’ (Knowles, 1980). However, third age education did not find its place in andragogy, and so the term gerogogy emerged (Label, 1978). Such divisions were not popular with all adult educators and by 1979 the term ‘humanagogy’ (Knudson, 1979) was being suggested in the United States, pointing to the idea of lifelong education. Unbeknown to the US scholars engaged in this terminological debate, similar terms actually existed in parts of Europe, some of which had a far longer history — and there is a series of books still published in Germany, edited by Franz Poggeler, entitled Studies in Pedagogy, Andragogy and Gerontogogy. The boundaries between adult education and third age education are, therefore, still reflected in this title, although the US debate 20 years earlier indicated the fact that, in the United States at least, boundaries between initial education, adult education and third age education were being lowered.

Now it might be argued, in most parts of the Western world, that the idea of lifelong learning, within which might be included lifelong education, has now become widely accepted. But as we have already noted, the idea of lifelong education still contains the dominant idea of vocational education so that the idea of third age education still lies at the margins, even though it is a rapidly developing field of lifelong education. And it is to this that we must now turn our attention.

Third age education

As we have noted, third age education really started between 1962 and 1972 and within the past quarter of a century it has grown and assumed a most significant place within the lives of many older adults. Third age education has assumed different structures in different parts of the world. In the United States much of it has taken one of two forms: Institutes for Learning in Retirement, which are attached to the universities but which also had their own network, and Elderhostel. However, in 1988, the Institute Network merged with Elderhostel to form the Elderhostel Institute Network, but Elderhostel itself is still regarded as separate from its institutional educational arm.

In Europe, the Universities of the Third Age (U3As) have assumed two forms: the first form (favoured by many continental European countries) attaches U3As to the local universities from which they receive support; and in the second form in the United Kingdom (and also Australia and New Zealand) the U3As are separate from the universities and are voluntary autonomous organizations in their own right.

In reality, however, this division is not quite as clear-cut geographically at it appears here and there are, for instance, third age education institutes in universities, such as at Strathclyde in Scotland. These educational organizations have become rather like social movements with a middle-class basis, campaigning for education for older persons, and reaching out to those people less fortunate than themselves and offering them an opportunity to pursue their learning, thus reflecting the way that liberal adult education has developed.

In precisely the same manner as other adults had to demonstrate, or have proven, that they could continue to learn after schooling, so third agers have had to demonstrate, or have proven, that they can continue to learn well into their very old age. This has probably been harder to do since the incidence of mental decline in third, and more significantly, fourth ages is well documented. Even so, there have been clear indications that older people’s crystallized intelligence can continue to increase well into old age (see Knox, 1977) and, by 1978, Gisela Labouvie-Vief (1978, p 249) concluded about...