By Michael Talibard
“ANYONE who stops learning is old, at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.” (Henry Ford). Yes, but why then does our society, or certainly our government, do little or nothing to facilitate that? “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” (John Dewey). But do our civil servants believe that? I can’t see much sign of it.
What used to be Jersey’s Education Department is rather hard to find in the phone book: you have to look in the government pages, and you have to look under C, not E, because it has renamed itself Children, Young People, Education and Skills. This may seem quirky but it does at least have the merit of truly reflecting their core values and limitations. They are (rightly) very interested in educating children and young people, but sadly they don’t seem much interested in educating the rest of us.
You are never too old to learn. I don’t believe the United Nations had only recent school-leavers in mind when they issued their Sustainable Development Goal 4, which reads: “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.”
If you google “lifelong learning” in Jersey you will find Highlands College. Exploring their website, you get the clear idea that for them it is all about getting young people into jobs. There are two issues here: should they be concerned mainly with school-leavers, and should they concentrate to such a degree on the job market? They talk about “the real world of work” as if only work were real; and they say they want to “ensure that [their young students] have the skills and dispositions that employers desire”. Oh dear!
Sadly, they appear to have no grasp of the meaning of “lifelong”. Life does not begin and end with work, nor at that young age. On average people spend only one third of their life at work, and obviously that figure plummets once we retire. Lifelong learning, properly so called, should be education for all parts of life (including leisure) and it should be on offer throughout one’s life. What better to do in retirement than educate yourself a bit more? Why not get a degree? It is good to learn stuff that is not merely meant to please an employer. You are never too old for that.
To be fair, Highlands does have an Adult and Community Education section, offering a good range of classes, many of them leisure-oriented. But what clientele do they have in mind? The photographs on the Subject Areas page of their website are all of attractive young ladies doing craft or cookery, or fastening their stockings for the dance (I kid you not). I don’t know whether these pictures reflect the actual age range of their customers, but I would prefer to see them more clearly making the elderly learner one of their targets. If this is not thought to be their job, let some other outfit be funded to do it.
Evening classes are less attractive to the elderly than morning or afternoon. Many of us oldies are not keen on going out after dark, and we need occupation during the day. So it isn’t easy to serve equally well the needs of those in work and those who have retired. Happily, nearly half of Highlands adult classes are daytime.
Still, the local organisation which best understands the term lifelong learning is the U3A. It is not funded by government, but that’s OK. It aims to benefit mainly the retired, but has no lower age limit. It does not offer paper qualifications, but it does provide old people with all sorts of daytime study and activity groups, led by volunteers. Soon after I founded the Jersey branch of U3A in the year 2000, I visited Highlands College to discuss how we could co-operate. Surely we must have common interests? Could we not support each other? I got an entirely blank response. Is it now time to revisit those questions?
On the mainland, they have UCAS, which is tasked with encouraging “mature” undergraduate students. They tell us that around 40% of these are over 30. I would prefer to be told how many are over 60 or 70. At any rate, that part of their website does feature the author Alan Markland, who is 78. Good for them!
The UK may outdo us somewhat in this regard, but they have nothing much to boast about. The top nations in provision of genuine lifelong learning, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, are the Scandinavians. No surprise there. To quote one OECD report: “The concept of lifelong learning in Norway is all-embracing and totally inclusive – learning is ubiquitous, life-important and occurs from the cradle to the grave.” You can’t say fairer than that.
Michael Talibard, who is now in his 80s, is a retired teacher and former head of English at Victoria College. He founded the Jersey branch of U3A and was its chairman for 20 years.
