As mentioned earlier, the tendency to reminisce as we grow older was regarded by many gerontologists as a pathology until Robert Butler showed it could be a highly positive way of integrating experiences and coming to terms with the past. As such, life review became a method for group therapy, creative writing groups, and as a source for living history drama. Some researchers went even further. They described elements of wisdom and aging creativity in the life review process. Not only were older adults of learning and expressing themselves, but because of their treasure house of past experience, they could also be ideal students and could make excellent teachers. (more…)

It is in this same period that college-and university-based Institutes for Learning in Retirement (ILRs, later renamed Lifelong Learning Institutes, or LLIs) arose. The prototype for subsequent LLIs was the Institute for Retired Professionals established in 1962 at the New School for Social Research (now New School University) in New York City. Only a handful of the member-led, member-taught, educational programs had appeared by the mid-1970s but by the mid-1980s there was a sharp rise in the rate of new programs started each year, until, by 2000, there were more than 400 of these programs across the United States and Canada. (more…)

In past decades, the traditional understanding of education, which was exclusively oriented toward formal learning in childhood and young adulthood, has been broadened to the concept of lifelong learning. Different versions of this concept have in common the idea that learning in different phases of human life span, (more…)

The term education describes the process of acquiring abilities, skills, experiences, and knowledge systems as well as the results of this process. Specific contents of education reflect general cultural values and preferences of social environments and milieus, social change, and societal progress. (more…)