Word: elderhostel
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Dates: during 1984-1984
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Students over 60 flock to academe in the Elderhostel program...
These new-old students are participants in Elderhostel, a program that combines the low cost of youth-hostel living with the challenge of college courses. The only admission requirement is that students be at least 60 years old (or accompanied by a senior citizen). Founded by former Teacher Martin Knowlton, 64, Elderhostel picks up where most adult-education classes leave off. After spending four years walking through Europe and observing adult-education programs, Knowlton came back to the U.S. determined to eliminate "a lot of the negatives associated with retirement." He believes that "when you're older you learn...
...other key to Elderhostel's success is that it is stimulating without being too strenuous. Faculty members at host colleges and universities create their own curriculums, and academic difficulty varies accordingly. Required homework is taboo, but elders are often given the regular college syllabus for reading on their own. At Whittier College in California last month, Elderhostelers began their day at 8 a.m. with breakfast followed by a 9 o'clock class called American Politics on Film. A 10:30 class offered hands-on training with Apple computers. Afternoons, everyone hopped into the shallow end of the college...
...Elderhostel provides a camaraderie that many older people find missing from their lives. Says Mary Fox, 68, a former teacher: "The courses are terrific, but the people themselves are the best." At the end of Whittier College's program, Louise O'Farrell, 63, a retired bookkeeper, and Margaret Berlier, 72, a former teacher, made plans to meet again in London at an August Elderhostel. O'Farrell has attended 20 Elderhostel courses so far, ranging from entomology and botany at Eastern Kentucky University to Victorian art at the University of London. Says she: "Getting the Elderhostel catalogue...
Teachers find that Elderhostel students can be refreshingly different from seniors of traditional college age. Says Arnold Wettstein, a professor of religion at Rollins College: "These people know who they are and are quite willing to look at the professor and say, 'Now, Sonny, you don't have this straight.' " In one communications class at the University of 1 Northern Colorado, the teacher chose the bombing of Pearl Harbor "as an example of the result of poor communications. She was challenged by one of her students, who turned out to be a retired Air Force general. Besides...