Some new directions in adult education programs for older Australians
Introduction
This paper describes a variety of adult education programs for older Australians. It has been difficult to obtain this information and it is certain to be incomplete because there is no obvious place to go for the information, or indeed to hear about new approaches that may be working successfully in different parts of the country. What is clear is that there are some novel programs within parts of Australia and these could work effectively in other parts of the country, provided other adult educators get to hear of them. The same probably holds true for NZ. Good ideas need to be shared and adapted elsewhere.
Australia is a vast continent; roughly 30 times the area of New Zealand but it has a population only 5 times greater. Despite this most obvious of disproportions the problem of how to minimise “the tyranny of distance” taxes the imaginations of adult educators in both countries. A number of the programs discussed below focus on new ways of increasing participation and some of their counterparts may exist in NZ. However, even within the country called Australia adult education provision is quite variable and most of this variability can be traced not to geographical isolation but rather to the vagaries of a federated system of government.
In theory at least, adult educators in NZ have the jump on their Australian counterparts because they need merely speak with a unified voice in order to convince one government to “do the right thing with program funding”. Certainly the Australian Government is elected by the people and this government can and has been persuaded to support national adult education initiatives, some of which are discussed later. But within that system lies a state/territory structure, which for many purposes functions as though Australia is eight different countries. Within the one Australia there are six states and two territories, each with its own elected government. Such a system has given rise to educational gems such as different schooling systems and awards in each State/Territory. As a result fully qualified teachers who move interstate may be required to do some retraining. Even worse, many children are held back for an entire school year when their parents move interstate because the different syllabi cover different basic schooling skills. This same federated model has also resulted in different gauge railways within different states, effectively hindering the transport of goods and services throughout the country for many years. For more than a century State and Territory rights have always been powerful forces and these rights account in very large part for the variability of adult education services in different parts of the country. Some states are much more supportive of adult education than others. The adult education picture is further muddied by the fact that some city councils can afford to, or are inclined to support local adult education programs more than others want to or can afford to. (The latter probably holds true for NZ as well.)
This fragmentation of the country has made it very difficult to obtain a realistic snapshot of adult education for older people within Australia at any given time. Indeed the complete picture within a state/territory or even a given region within a State/Territory is simply unavailable. To obtain the information about most of the programs discussed in this paper required many hours on the phone and email trying first to find out what is happening within a region, then subsequently trying to contact adult educators or administrators for specific information about various programs. 7 Frequently, speaking directly to program organisers resulted in a “snowball effect” with suggestions for other adult educators to contact who were offering valuable programs. In a lot of cases the specific information revealed that a novel sounding program was merely a minor variation of a major program that could more effectively and succinctly described in generic terms. For example, computer courses run by older volunteers for older participants are important programs. However, there are scores of these now operating throughout Australia and singling out more than one or two as case studies would do little to increase the understanding of the later life adult education picture across the country. Inevitably, such a hit and miss process has failed to unearth many interesting programs. However, it is a start and the idea of documenting novel and effective adult education programs within the country may trigger others to take the search further.
Adult education may be good for your health
Over the years many adult educators have provided well-reasoned justifications in support of adult education programs for seniors. For example Groombridge (1982) listed five major reasons:
- Education can foster the self-reliance and independence of the elderly by enhancing their self-esteem and strengthening their mental and physical health, thereby reducing the increasing demands being made on public and private resources.
- Education is a major factor in enabling older people to cope with innumerable practical and psychological problems in a complex, changing and fractured world.
- Education for and by older people themselves strengthens their actual or potential contribution to society.
- Self-awareness by older people, their self-interpretation and the communication of their experiences to other generations fosters balance, perspective and understanding which is valuable in a rapidly changing world of conflict.
- Education is crucial for many older people who strive for expressions and learning.
Important as these reasons are they just never seem to have had that ring of authenticity required to convince hard-nosed politicians to release the purse strings. However, recent hand-wringing accompanying population ageing, coupled with evidence linking cognitive challenge in later life to health and well being (and, by implication, continued independence) could provide adult educators with new arguments.
Population ageing and the persistent scarcity of funding for all social services suggests that preventative rather than remedial interventions must become the major goal for addressing myriad social and economic challenges that accompany the ageing boom. Friedrich (2003) summarised findings from a number of large studies that promote the notion of integration of physical, psychological, and social domains for developing optimum solutions for ageing-related issues. Successful ageing, ageing well, healthy ageing, productive ageing and positive ageing are among a number of quite recently proposed models of ageing. These have evolved because researchers have taken a broad brush approach to the study of ageing instead of the usual approach by an individual or small team concentrating on a single dimension of ageing such as health, or the sociology or psychology of ageing (Friedrich 2003). The models are products of large, integrated studies involving specialist researchers from many disciplines. They bear striking similarities in that they focus on positive ways in which the individual can intervene in the ageing process rather than focussing on loss and dependence. In so doing these models have the potential to transform wider society's deeply ingrained, condescending mindset that ageing inevitably equates with poor health, decline, and expensive reliance on social services, into a socially acceptable and more accurate understanding of the realities of ageing.
The Successful Ageing model is the product of a coherent set of dozens of individual research projects, making the composite study the most extensive and comprehensive study on ageing in America. In their highly readable book, Rowe and Kahn (1999) describe in everyday language a small number of key behaviours or characteristics of older people who conform to the successful ageing model. One of these is the importance of keeping the mind active. This finding arose in part from a longitudinal study in which the lives of more than 1000 high functioning older people were followed for eight years to determine the factors that might predict successful physical and mental ageing. Perhaps of no surprise to adult educators many reported that they sustain their mental ability as they age by actively working at keeping their minds sharp. The research suggests that "this is part of a cycle that promotes mental ability: the more you have, the more you do; the more you do, the more you preserve" (p. 130). Education was found to be the strongest predictor of sustained mental function in later life. Rowe and Kahn speculated on two possible effects that could explain this link. First, education in early life may have a direct beneficial effect on brain circuitry; or second, education may set a lifelong pattern (eg reading, chess, bridge, and crossword puzzles) that serves to maintain cognitive function in old age. Furthermore, some actions to avert or minimise cognitive loss can be undertaken at any age. With training "elderly men and women who have experienced some cognitive decline can…offset approximately two decades of memory loss" (p. 137). Heady stuff.
The message seems clear for older people – in order to maximise our independence one of the things we must do in retirement is continue to nudge the neurones. Play bridge, do crosswords, take part in interesting adult education activities. Whatever it takes continue to keep the grey matter engaged. New neural pathways are formed even in advanced old age.
This is an excellent message for adult educators to propagate – lifelong learning is good for your health. But there’s more thought-provoking substance within the successful ageing model.
Apart from the benefits gained through keeping the mind challenged, most adult education programs offer another largely unheralded benefit for older participants. The successful ageing model also highlights the importance of keeping up strong social networks with special friends and confidantes. Unfortunately, in later life, long-standing social networks become increasingly jeopardised with each passing year. For example networks become severed through calamitous events such as death of a close friend, or perhaps by being thrust into the role of providing continuous care for a dementing spouse. And, even though the average health of the ageing population is improving, old machines inevitably need more frequent service, so the chances of developing an isolating illness or disability increase with age. These and other age-related isolating circumstances, like giving up one’s driving licence, and poor or expensive public transport, make social isolation commonplace even in large cities, a circumstance briefly alluded to in the introduction to this paper. Fractured social networks must somehow be replaced by new ones. Enter adult education.
Most formal adult education programs are social as well as educational. Most are undertaken in a face-to-face situation with like-minded strangers some of whom become close friends through the shared adult education experiences. New social networks lead to new friendships, which in turn lead to further socialising and interesting experiences such as dining out, visits to the theatre and so forth. Those who engage with life through shared involvement with interesting and motivated friends seem unlikely candidates for the downward spiral into depression and related expensive ill health problems faced by many lonely people. Thus, joining something like a U3A or other later life adult education groups reinforces two of the important platforms of successful ageing – namely keep the brain active and maintain strong social networks. However, there’s more. When compared with almost all other social services, adult education is an extremely inexpensive option. Adult education programs usually don’t sink or swim on the basis of expensive infrastructure or elaborate support and they readily slot into the community. Indeed, in the case of self-help programs such as U3A, volunteer expertise can be conservatively calculated as contributing annually many millions of dollars of in-kind service to the national economy (Swindell 2000; Swindell 1999). Those three facts – later life adult education helps to improve the mind; later life adult education helps to form new social networks; later life adult education is a relatively low cost social service; - can be knitted into submissions that very persuasively argue for greater government support for lifelong learning activities. Lifelong learning offers an inexpensive solution to major social challenges accompanying population ageing. Lifelong learning should take its place alongside other health-related messages to the entire community. Quit smoking! Exercise more! Eat less fat! Learn for life!
What about the isolated older people?
The above fanfare for adult education has failed to address the fact that many older people are isolated within the community by illness, incapacity, as carers and so on. Circumstances beyond their control prevent them from taking part in the usual face-to-face activities through which most people maintain social networks or establish new ones. Until the advent of the Internet there was no practicable way for adult educators to try to overcome this problem.
A number of research articles have shown that people of all ages use the Internet to create meaningful social networks with people they may never actually meet. For example, Hampton and Wellman (2001) carried out a longitudinal study of residents of Netville, a suburb in which residents had routine access to advanced new communication technology. They found greater evidence of community involvement and strengthened ties with friends and relatives living far away from Netville, compared with those who did not routinely use the new technology. Other studies similarly underscore the potential of the Internet to foster new social networks (see, for example; Komito, 1998; Kraut et al. 2002).
The Internet is a much more flexible medium than any other communication technology for empowering isolated older people. The Internet is becoming increasingly easy for novices to use; information can be exchanged quickly, often in real-time; once the technology is in place, it is durable and quite inexpensive to use; and the proportion of older people who have used a computer continues to climb rapidly. Indeed email and other Internet-related applications are now so commonplace that Fox (2001) described the generation of people who are about to retire as a “silver tsunami” of Internet users. Retirement will make little or no difference to their routine use of Internet services.
No fanciful leap of logic is involved in further predicting that Internet-savvy groups of seniors will use the Internet to add virtual social networks to their face-to-face social networks and, if necessary, as health or other circumstances dictate, substitute the latter entirely. Some of the newer programs described in the following section point to the strong demand by seniors for programs that help them to come to grips with new communications technologies, or which have been developed because of isolation difficulties.
Adult education programs for Australian seniors
Earlier I mentioned the diversity of bodies funding adult education programs throughout Australia and the difficulty of finding up-to-date, or indeed any documentation about those programs. Adult Learning Australia (ALA) is the umbrella organisation and flagship for adult education in Australia and would be one organisation that could well consider adopting such a national clearinghouse role in the future. ALA is the national peak body representing organisations and individuals in the adult learning field. For many years it has been funded by grants from the Australian Government via the Australian National Training Authority (ANTA) and more recently from the Department of Education Science and Training (DEST). Other sources of funding come from membership dues (both individual and organisations), subscriptions and project revenues. The national office is based in Canberra and employs three full time staff and several part time staff depending on funding and projects which are being undertaken.
Since 1960 ALA has operated as a not-for-profit entity to advocate on behalf of all sectors which make up the diverse fabric of adult education throughout Australia. Today it has both organizational and individual members throughout all States and Territories including adult educators in universities, TAFE Colleges, Community Houses and adult community education providers (ACE), as well as community workers, librarians, individual tutors and trainers, volunteers and students. ALA has a strong interest in the contribution learning makes to active ageing in the community, and particularly where good quality learning research can support the retention of an ageing workforce. Major regular activities, services and events include publication of the Australian Journal of Adult Learning (three times yearly), Quest magazine (four times yearly), coordination of Adult Learners Week activities, and running an annual national conference.