CEO's of Their Own Lives
There’s an entire field of study called “Adult Learning,” which recognizes that older brains don’t work the same way younger brains do. This field of study actually has a name – andragogy. Recognition of these brain differences does not come as a surprise to us older folks – we know that we process information differently than we did when we were younger. Some studies suggest that the brain fully matures by about age 25; cognitive decline can begin by age 45, although other studies suggest it doesn’t start until age 60.
Whenever it starts, the people who take Osher classes are fully into the age of potential decline in brain function. For the Osher program to be strong and resilient, it needs to operate with full awareness of the learning needs of its members.
All of this being said, I am totally impressed by the capacity of our Osher members to engage their brains well into their retirement years – the 60s, 70s, 80s, and even 90s. Frequently our bodies break down before our brains – people stop taking Osher classes when mobility, hearing, or eyesight problems limit their ability to attend classes.
So what are some of the things that we need to understand about adult learning? Many of the principles of adult learning that have been proposed and explained over the past 40 years or so relate more to adult learners who are still in the workforce – recommendations about how to retrain workers in the workplace or how to offer college or graduate programs to older students. The issues with a program like Osher are somewhat different, and I’m going to talk about how the principles of adult learning apply to our program.
First, to engage in an educational program, older learners have to want to learn. Children and younger adult learners often go to school or attend training programs because they have to; the members of the Osher program go to classes because they want to. Let’s face it – we don’t have time to waste. Instructors in the program know that our members vote with their feet – if they don’t like a class, they either leave while the class is in session or don’t return for the next session of a multi-session class. They’re not usually rude about this – they just decide they don’t want to stay, so they leave. A friend explained this to me once by saying that these people are “the CEOs of their own lives.” They generally don’t like to wait to get approval before they decide what they’re going to do. NOTE: There is a spousal exception to this rule.
Second, older learners bring a wealth of real-world experience to a learning situation. This can be an asset or a liability. Frequently the life experiences of Osher members add important dimensions to a classroom experience. When I’m teaching a class, I frequently begin by saying “If you literally wrote the book on this subject, please chime in but be kind.” They do chime in, and they are kind. Sometimes the members’ life experience can be a liability, if their prior knowledge is inaccurate, incomplete, or naïve. This can lead them to push back against an instructor, go away mad, and complain to the program office. People who have believed one thing to be true for multiple decades are resistant to changing their minds, even if they encounter persuasive evidence that they are, in fact, wrong.
I want to expand on this point a bit. When you sit in an Osher class, you often don’t know the people around you very well. You often see some of the same people in classes from one semester to the next, as people with common interests tend to take the same classes. It’s only after being in some of the same classes that you learn that person sitting next to you was a surgeon, the guy over there is a retired general, the women in front of you used to be a business executive, and that person across the room was a high school principal. You find that many of them used to live in the same community where you lived. Many of them, for example, lived in Northern Virginia for some portion of their lives. When we start talking about our previous lives, we find we can reference particular landmarks or highways to pinpoint where we lived or worked. Sometimes we find that our kids went to the same school.
I have met some extremely interesting people in the Osher program. The retired engineer who teaches courses on Chinese cooking, the retired urologist who teaches art history classes, the retired intelligence officer who teaches about the American Civil War, and so forth. For many of the instructors and members, Osher provides the opportunity for them to explore a field that may have been a hobby during their working years; the program gives them the opportunity to explore an interest that they didn’t have time for they were younger.
Third, older learners want to control their learning experiences. Whereas children or younger adult learners are often required to follow a curriculum, older learners want to decide for themselves what classes to take, whether to attend every session, whether to do any outside reading or “homework,” whether to take notes, and so forth. Too much structure turns them away.
Fourth, older learners frequently don’t hear as well as they used to. That includes the Osher instructors, who are usually in the same age range as the Osher members. Everyone needs to be aware of that as they lecture or ask/answer questions. In addition, our eyesight is often not as sharp as it once was. Slide with a lot of small type don’t go over very well.
Fifth, afternoon classes interfere with naptime for many older folks. They may sign up for a class, but instructors quickly learn not to be insulted if they doze off. I prefer to teach in the morning so I don’t encounter this problem as much.
I attended an Osher class this morning that provides an example of what I’m talking about. The course is called “Wars’ Forms and Patterns,” taught by a man who was an army helicopter pilot but has worked for years at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. There are 40 people in the class; the first session had 35 attendees, which is pretty good. Today was the second session, and attendance was down to 25 people. You can never know for sure why people don’t come back to the second session of a class; it may be that they didn’t like the first class, but it may also be that they had a doctor’s appointment today, overslept, or didn’t feel like putting shoes on today. We’ll see what attendance is like next week.
This class attracted many people with military experience; there are only five women in the class, and the men all talked from the perspective of their military careers. But one of the people in the class is a retired philosophy professor, and others were engineers, human relations professionals, teachers, and so forth. It’s interesting to see how the military people, for example, respond to a philosophical approach to war – something that many of them experienced in a very personal way. Today’s class went past the end time this morning – the discussion was lively, and we didn’t want to stop. Finally, the instructor flipped the lights on and opened the classroom door so we would realize it was time to leave.
No one fell asleep today, so far as I could tell.