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The educated senior citizen: Continuing education after retirement

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Abstract

Negative attitudes toward the older person or senior citizen are quite pervasive in American society. Even retirees have been conditioned to view themselves as has-beens. And yet, with encouragement, many, especially the educated among them, can assume creative roles in the restructuring of their retirement leisure lives. For the past seventeen years at the INSTITUTE FOR RETIRED PROFESSIONALS of the New School for Social Research in New York City over six hundred retirees have assumed new roles as volunteer teachers, coordinators, paper-givers, reporters, and students in over seventy-five classes in a “do-it-yourself” inner university. It is an exciting new approach to learning, offering a creative outlet for the use of retirement leisure.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. the New School for Social Research, 10011, New York, New York

    Hy Hirsch (the founder and Director of the Institute for Retired Professionals)

Authors
  1. Hy Hirsch
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Additional information

Reprinted fromLiberal Education, The Bulletin of the Association of American Colleges, May 1978, with permission.

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Hirsch, H. The educated senior citizen: Continuing education after retirement. Alternative Higher Education 5, 57–64 (1980). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01080354

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01080354

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