At the last CABS meeting, I agreed to post two blogs during
April 2012. You can see by the fact that today’s date is 27th April
that I have left it rather late. In fact I’ll probably be leaving it even later
as I have realised that I’m not actually sure how to post to the CABS blog and
have had to ask for guidance.
Apart from my own indolence there are, I think a couple of reasons
why I have not got round to posting before now. The first is that I have been
busy doing other things that seem to have had more pressing deadlines than the
CABS blog. The second is that I have been undecided what to talk about.
The Chapel at Maynooth
My original intention had been to say something about the
AEA conference that I attended in Maynooth (just outside Dublin) in March. This
conference was organised by the Association for Education and Ageing (AEA) in
partnership with Age Action Ireland, WEA (Northern Ireland) and New Dynamics of
Ageing. I presented a version of a paper
Josie Tetley has developed about the OPT-In project. The conference took place
at the National University of Ireland Maynooth (NUIM) which began life as a
seminary. Its claim to fame is that over the years it has trained 11000
Catholic priests, more than anywhere else in the world. Although it is now
established mainly as a secular university the fact that our meetings were
overlooked by portraits of severe-looking clerics gave a definite sense of
place to the conference. And the fact
that I presented the OPT-In paper in a room called ‘Divinity 1’ is something
that I’ll remember.
The conference was interesting with some fascinating papers
about later life learning, particularly in Europe. It is noticeable that there
is a greater level of interest in learning in later life in Europe than in the
UK (especially England) where learning seems firmly focused on the skills
agenda. Older learners have been particularly affected by the decimation of
unaccredited adult learning in England.
AEA is concerned to try and establish the importance of
learning through the life course. It looks likely that I will become the chair
of AEA later this year. I am particularly keen to broaden the connections with
what goes on in Europe. I am also concerned to establish connections in the UK
with researchers whose interest in older people has implications for learning
and with health and welfare practitioners whose practice has similar implications.
I think these connections have the scope to broaden and deepen the role of
learning in later life. There are all sorts of things that we need to learn
about as we age and in order to make sense of our ageing and I hope that AEA
will play a part in developing this awareness among researchers, practitioners
and older people.
Jonathan Hughes
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