Learning and the Third Age

Robert Tobias Centre for Continuing Education,, University of Canterbury Introduction The primary purpose of this paper is to provide an historical perspective on the learning and education of people in their middle years and older people of the 3rd Age. Although chronological age may be a significant factor influencing people’s lives and learning experiences and perspectives and providing a marker of common historical experiences of successive cohorts, it is not a factor which determines people’s work, welfare or health status or their learning interests or capacities (Withnall, 1997). Class, gender, race, ethnicity, occupation and prior experiences of formal education are likely to exert at least as much influence on the lives and learning interests of people in their middle years and older as that of chronolological age (Tobias, 1998). As was pointed out by the Social Advisory Council (Williams et al., 1984) ‘The most significant single characteristic of older people is not their age but their diversity’(p 19).