The Best Talk in Town
Sought-After Sikh: Fellow Renaissance Society members chat with Onkar S. Bindra (in turban) after his presentation to peers at CSU, Sacramento. Photo for NRTA by Gerry McIntyre.
When Nancy Sack, a former high school English teacher in Marblehead, MA, took early retirement 25 years ago, her first priority was to search for intellectual stimulation. She joined the Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement (HILR), and it became the focus of her retirement.
“What I have found most rewarding is leading courses,” she says. “Plus the friendships developed over the years.” The charismatic Sack is a popular presenter, offering study groups on such topics as the work of Franz Kafka and Ian McEwan, Russian literature, and British art, to other older learners.
“This is learning for its own sake,” says Dean Michael Shinagel, who founded HILR in 1977: No grades, no degree at the end. Limited to 500 to keep it a manageable and close community, HILR is a peer-learning membership organization that is self-governing. Members develop their own curricula (50 courses each semester), teach each other and learn from each other, all for the joy of it. Shinagel calls his current members “a remarkably energetic and creative group.” They put on a production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, publish a creative writing journal, mount photographic exhibits. “The class directory reads like a ‘Who’s Who in America,’” he says.
Academic Umbrellas. In 1977, the HILR was one of a handful of lifelong learning institutes sponsored by colleges or universities, which provide classroom space, library privileges, and an academic umbrella for a self-governing membership organization. Today there are more than 500 such institutes, and that number is growing.
“When you retire, you need a place to go to, or, as one of our members said, a place to go home from,” says Sara Craven, director of the Osher Institute for Learning in Retirement at Duke (OLLI), which started in 1977 with 42 members and now serves 1200 people. Hands-on study is popular: There is a chorus, a band, a small chamber group, even a recorder group. Recent popular seminar topics: Churchill and FDR, both taught by a retired physician; East Asia taught by a former diplomat; and biotechnology presented by a former prof at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
At most lifelong learning institutes, the most popular peer-taught courses are in the humanities—history and literature, religion, art, philosophy. Tony Pazzanita of Wellesley Hills, MA, retired from Travelers Financial Services Company, aims to “make history come alive.” He has led 24 study groups at HILR, ranging from “The Age of Jackson” to “France from Versailles to Vichy.”
Not for the Lazy. With the PLATO Society of UCLA, Maria Kornet, a former social worker and travel agent, has been able to pursue her lifelong love of literature and art. She coordinates study/discussion groups on such topics as the Mexican muralists, the Bloomsbury Group, and the Algonquin Round Table.
“When you join, you make a commitment of two to three hours a week,” says Kornet, now Plato’s president. A different member each week gives a 20-minute presentation (ideally a written outline, with provocative discussion questions, is handed out two weeks in advance). A study group coordinator puts in 40 to 50 hours a semester.
Since joining Plato 15 years ago, Add Kermath, a former Exxon executive, has coordinated study groups on China, India, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Great Islamic Thinkers. “When I spent time in the Middle East in the 1970s, my focus was getting the oil out of the ground and into the market,” he says. “As a Plato Society member, my focus is on understanding the culture.”
Sol Scope uses his experience as a trial attorney to coordinate study groups on great trials in history (Joan of Arc, the Salem witch trials) and the Plato Debates, modeled on the Oxford Debates. “Twelve people, 24 sessions, with topics like ‘The War in Iraq, Justified or Not,’” he says. “You’ll be sitting in a room full of people from their 60s to their 90s, and they’re all smart. I like the fact that it’s self-directed. No instructor.”
Part of the pleasure of peer learning is the richness of life experience. John Andrew, president of the Renaissance Society, founded 20 years ago at California State University at Sacramento, recalls a “Great Trials” seminar on the trial of Nelson Mandela when a member who had been born in the Netherlands and raised in South Africa shared her memories of life during the apartheid regime and the time of the Mandela trial.
Techie Boomers. As the first of the baby boomers move into retirement, a dual culture is developing among lifelong learners.
“We have seen two streams of learning develop,” says Leonie Gordon, director of the HILR. “The newer people, the leading edge of the baby boomers, are mobile, technologically literate, and highly educated. The people who came first were also highly educated, but didn’t have the culture of technology.”
The veteran study group leaders, she says, were like Nancy Sack, characterized by a broader knowledge base. One person might be able to offer courses ranging from the Philosophy of Isaiah Berlin to British architecture to medieval music. “Now the courses are becoming more specialized,” Gordon says. “And the newer people are looking for a more technology-based curriculum. They’re developing cutting-edge courses in philosophy of biology, evolutionary origins of religion, physics of music, postmodernism.”
This shift is just the beginning. “The fastest growing cohort in the U. S. population is people over 85,”says Harvard’s Dean Shinagel. “With 77 million baby boomers approaching retirement, lifelong learning will be an important movement in the 21st century.”
Since 2002, lifelong learning institutes on 73 campuses in 30 states have received multi-year $1 million-plus grants from the San Francisco–based Bernard Osher Foundation, which has as its goal 100 lifelong learning institutes, at least one for each state.
Lifelong learners, compared to younger students, tend to be focused on intrinsic goals and more tolerant of faculty limitations, and they tend to see themselves as co-learners, willing to invest time in developing a sense of community—perhaps because teachers and students share similar ages and life experiences. So found a recent study of five programs in the Maine Senior College Network by E. Michael Brady, research fellow at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, University of Southern Maine.
“The lifelong learners here and in the national Osher network are the embodiment of ‘positive aging,’ with the emphasis on strengths rather than deficits,” says Kali Lightfoot, executive director of the Osher center at the University of Southern Maine. “They are intellectually curious, looking to the future rather than dwelling in the past, and convinced they can make a difference in their own and other peoples’ lives. When a 93-year-old tells me how excited she is to be learning about Afghanistan instead of telling me about the obvious difficulty she has walking upstairs, I feel that our lifelong learning network is doing something right. Or when a 50-year-old discovers in class that the 93-year-old has much insight and intellectual strength to share.”
Stellar Example. At York County Senior College in Maine, seven students aged 62 to 83 took an “Odyssey of the Mind” program using brain teasers and exercises for creative problem solving. In May 2005, this team won first prize in a “Laugh-a-thon” at the Odyssey of the Mind World Finals in Boulder, CO, becoming overnight celebrities among the thousands of student contestants. (Their skit was about a “seasoned” citizen who robs a bank so she will be sent to a federal penitentiary and not have to worry about taking care of herself financially as she gets older.)
“At the end, the audience stood with gales of applause and lots of teary eyes,” says Fern Brown, their coach, “and the kids embraced the seniors. A major premise of Odyssey of the Mind is that creativity can be taught. We learned that it can be taught—at any age.”
Want to Start Your Own Lifelong Learning Institute?
If you’re not near a lifelong learning institute and are interested in starting your own, visit the Web sites of programs highlighted above for ideas.
- Peer learning programs generally benefit from being self-directed. In this way they are unlike university-run “adult-education” programs.
- University affiliation may bring privileges such as library access; however, lifelong learning institute courses must have an academic quality equal to undergraduate courses to merit this standing.
- A step-by-step plan for organizers interested in forming a group with a university affiliation may be found at www.elderhostel.org.
- Lifelong learning institutes that do not have university affiliation may wish to join the Elderhostel Institute Network; however, they must carry their own liability insurance. Membership dues can be set to cover such costs.
About the Author
Jane Ciabattari also writes fiction (Stealing the Fire: Stories, www.caniosbooks.com).
This article originally appeared in NRTA Live & Learn, Spring 2006.
