One of Jane Matthews’ students (name witheld to avoid embarrassment) shared this picture of a Goldwork piece she has finally finished. It is a splendid piece of embroidery and looks wonderful mounted in a frame. Often, the projects inspired by a course continue long after the course has finished. Many Students continue the activities back
A private donation was made for us to plant a tree and for a bench in memory of former Tutor Derek Hyatt [Guardian Obituary and Telegraph Obituary], who passed at the age of 84 back in 2015. It is not surprising why such a figure in the world of art should still be remembered after
Kay Leech, who was awarded the first Friends of Higham Scholarship, has made a great start on her ‘journey’ through various courses. The outcome will be that Kay will produce artistic or craft work based upon her experiences of and learning from each course. Higham will host an exhibition later this year to showcase what
The lucky winner who won the original picture by Robert Dutton was a lady called Carol. She says she never usually wins anything. Well she has now! The raffle, with Robert’s painting as the sole prize, sold 361 tickets and raised £361. This money will go towards the improvement of the pond area in the grounds
Higham Tutor Andrew Lacey has had a new book published last month called ‘The English Civil War in 100 Facts.’ Andrew introduces the book thus: In January 1649 the unthinkable happened: after a public trial the king of England was beheaded on a scaffold outside his palace of Whitehall. The world would never be quite
At Higham we enjoy the diversity of many different Tutors who each bring their ‘take’ on how things are taught ad what is taught. Despite the variety of approaches, some advocating the deeper understanding of colour, some of generic drawing skills, some of underlying fundamentals etc., one unifying agreement is that what surface you use
One of our Tutors has written her own book to accompany some of her courses. Viv Philpot has produced a very nice colour publication, Sketching Your Holiday Memories, fully illustrated, taking would-be improving artists through the essentials in a very easy to digest and useful way. Not available commercially, Viv’s book supports the skills and
One of our wood carving students, Eric Breese, has just been presented by Sharon his tutor with a special cake for his 90th birthday. If you look closely at the photo, you will see clues to the tools and work Eric has been involved with on his courses, as well as a sugarpaste representation of
Alston Hall was, until the beginning of last year, a sister college to Higham based in the Ribble Valley in Lancashire. We shared many tutors and, indeed, students, and strived to be true to the same aims of lifelong learning, at one time both being part of the, now defunct, Adult Residential College’s Association (ARCA).
My late father had a stairlift installed at 84. They came to him on an invited visit one day and it was installed by lunchtime the next. That is not bad service and he seemed pleased with it. Of course, it relieved him of the immense worry of ‘having to face the stairs’ and also
Nearly half a century on, as a country we still have some quarters regretting the drastic cuts made to the British railway system by Dr Beeching. It involved the recommended closure of over two thousand (over half of) stations and 30 per cent of routes. Of course, there were solutions to help remedy the situation,
Following on from Part 1… If we are to reinvent Lifelong Learning in the modern context, we have a wide range of questions we can use to develop answers that should help us construct our solution. Some of these are not easy to answer, and most require a depth of investigation that will consult many
What can you do? Your volunteer system is working very well on the whole. The majority of people are motivated and engaged and seem to know what needs to be done. Most individuals turn up regularly, perform their duties, even give a little extra, and objectives are achieved. In time, routines are established and those
What follows will end up becoming a vision of the future… (in dreams) Society is getting obsessed with model or version numbers for certain things. We crave the latest technology, whether hardware of software and for the latest model of car. Version numbers have been used in the specialised industries to denote improvements to existing
In the UK, we will have a particular view of what life stages are like based upon our experiences. The majority of people would probably look back on their childhood in a certain way, even perhaps romanticising as to how things used to be before the pressures of adulthood kick in, or remembering with dread
I’m sounding some people out at the moment with a rather controversial idea. It is based upon countering the argument for the cost of lifelong learning and whether some people could be excluded from opportunities due to the cost. I am trying to develop ideas for other ways that people might be able to contribute
I am starting to understand now some fundamental criteria sociologists know and I, personally, have not really questioned before. One set of criteria is the difference between ‘Community’ and ‘Society’. This is important, as the word ‘community’ has come up time and time again in my work, and will continue to do so – yet
In 1968, the Man in Black, Johnny Cash, played to a bunch of convicts in San Quentin Prison. His singing for the common criminal set a trend and highlighted a cultural change in his native USA. Cash’s career continued in a similar vein, as he became the archetypical ‘outlaw’ in touch with the rough side
It is hard to ignore the fact that everybody, well, nearly everybody, has their own ideas as to what we should do in older adulthood, whether it be tilling the soil around our grape hyacynths or travelling the world. Ideas are great, they inspire and enable us to model our dreams upon existing images. What
It is common in the education world to talk of ‘peers’. For younger people, perhaps because of their physical size, it is easier to classify peer groups. Babies and toddlers are two distinct groups, as are nursery, infants and juniors. Once the secondary phase education is reached, divisions tend to be associated with a hierarchy
Time and time again I come across confusion between the terms Education and Learning. On reflection, I would suggest that the former is what someone receives, or a professional delivers, whereas the latter is what someone does. There are, undoubtedly different interpretations of these two terms, but they are not interchangeable. One is favoured by
When I began to know Sartre, I was tempted also to include his contemporary and occasional associate/adversary (depending upon who you believe) also. The popular existentialism embodied by the work of Sartre and Camus (who often declined the label of existentialist anyway) without doubt affected the way societies thought about themselves and provoked numerous others
All the hype and concern about well-being that is so ‘de-rigeur’ at the moment is making me feel uneasy. It seems that every product seller, every politician and every celebrity is able to share with us the secrets of well-being. Sadly, though, it looks like it could be more of a case of trying to
American social psychologist Barry Scwartz’s book The Paradox of Choice (2005) presents an interesting concept that people are actually limited by the overwhelming array of choices they have to make. By having such choice, he says, we set ourselves up to expect higher standards and end up less fulfilled. Such a “choice overload” can lead
Some people don’t give a fig for anyone else – that’s a fact of life. As long as someone else’s situation does not affect their own directly, they’ll continue to turn a blind eye and get on with their own life. Sadly, this cannot be changed easily and we have to rely on the more
The proliferation of the term ‘social networking’ around the Internet and, indeed, in government policy, makes one think that it is the bees knees, the ‘must have’ of modern society. People could be forgiven for believing there isn’t much need to take notice very simply because it’s largely just a flash in the pan and
I have been trying to find some words of Margaret Thatcher from the 1980s which I remember as being the only thing I could relate to in the commonly-called ‘yuppie’ era. It had to do, I seem to remember, with the traditional family unit and how it was being broken up. I’m not totally sure,
One quite popular model of lifelong learning activity these days is one we could call the ‘pool-together’ model. It is not insititution-based, but may well have originated through a formal set-up. Essentially, a group of individuals each pay a little each time and their money covers the cost of a venue and a tutor. This
Luckily, as the baby boomers have aged, it does seem that we have more ‘glamorous grannies’ – a term, incidentally, which I wish were outlawed, along with all the other ‘old git’ types of humour that abound today (just look at the birthday cards section of any card shop). Luckily, the discrimination that we suffer
If you are ever allowed out to meet new people, and occasionally I am, you nay be familiar with one of the most common ice-breakers used in conversation between two people in western society. I have recently been looking into this, trying to ascertain whether it reflects a preoccupation with status or role and if
How many of our choices in life are made independently and and how many are influenced by external intentions? This is a significant question when it comes to how we should best try to steer people in the right directions. I am not really talking from a marketing point of view, but then I am.
I was discussing with one person the idea of older adults being seen as a resource for encouragement of younger members of the community. She works for a philanthropic cause which helped a project get off the ground. The project involves firemen and firewomen going into primary schools in areas where they have a tendency
Those little grey cells benefit from stimulation. Few would argue that, but we often risk not providing enough channels for our mental hunger pangs and settle for less taxing and less enriching experiences. Having to think a little is a good start, having to recall or remember is also a practice which helps one to
The term ‘Third Age’, aside from its invention in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings as one of his ages of Middle Earth, can be defined as the current period of life between working adult life and old age. It has become popularised by the University of the Third Age (u3A) which was established in
A potted chronology for you: In 1903 The Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) was founded and continues to this day, albeit in a slimmer form, catering mainly for people who have ended their working lives. In 1919, just after the Great War ended that local authorities took on a duty to provide any form of adult
In 1994 American couple Paul and Lori Hogan started a business called ‘HomeInstead’. The business was based upon the experience of caring for the couple’s grandmother as she got older and became less independent. They realised very soon during the care they were giving that it was much better for an older person to stay
Certain commodities available to the population of the world are subject to being rationed when they are in limited supply. Even in the UK, we ‘suffer’ the constant threat of not being able to use our hose pipes. Other things are provided on a ‘pay as you go’ system, which in effect rations people to
Perhaps it is significant that, in Socratic terms, age begets enlightenment and, as we get older, we humans manage to appreciate all manner of things far more than we did in younger days. Our own experiences, and often subconscious reflexivity – the ability to learn from these experiences – provide a bedrock for us on
Taking it easy or just simply not doing so much any more is often an attractive option to people who have been previously active. However this attitude isn’t necessarily the best attitude when it comes to living a long and fruitful life. It has been recognised that the intention to do things is as good
I have been delving into a lot of background stuff at the moment. Apart from updating myself on latest research, data and articles on the topics of ageing, older adult well-being and lifelong learning in general, I am also dipping into some philosophy. These days, being of an enquiring mind is aided by modern technology.
Often phrases are spoken or written with little thought as to their real meaning. I would suggest that there is an enormous difference between these two, apparently similar terms and that recognition of the difference is key to a fundamental understanding of education. It all boils down to the contrast between the meaning of the
A seminar I attended today was about policy analysis. The main focus was to compare two ‘policy’ documents: The English White Paper: The Importance of Teaching: The Schools White Paper 2010 The Scottish report: Teaching Scotland’s Future 2011 The contrast between the two tomes is stark, despite the fact that they are tackling similar issues
People are living longer: Fact. People are spending more time being active post-retirement: Fact. People are thinking for themselves: Not necessarily. The questionable nature of democracy in the current climate of globalisation, with capitalism being seemingly defined in numerous different ways to suit different ends (usually involving finance) – all this is taking its toll
Andragogy is a term used to define an approach to adult education, as opposed to child education, which is often related to pedagogy. With the decline in adult education as a valued, broad asset in our economy, a re-definition ia called for. The recent savage cuts made by the UK government have had a devastating
Adult Applying technically to anybody past the age of consent in the eyes of the law, but more practically in our context referring to someone who has completed their initial compulsory primary, secondary and tertiary level schooling. Herein we have a difference as some people don’t continue on to tertiary level and therefore may find
Late last year, which had seen some of the most sweeping cuts ever seen to anything linked with public services in the light of ‘austerity measures’ by the government. Southwark Council in South London announced a flagship library, a ‘Super Library’ no less. Representing £1.4m, it was to be a library as we know it,
In my previous post on the Inquiry Into the Future for Lifelong Learning (2009) I tried to pose a fairly positive view of it as “the definitive report into the future … the first authoritative and coherent strategic framework for lifelong learning in the UK for the next 10 15 years”. I embraced its intentions
In the sphere of Lifelong Learning, near the end of the last decade, a timely series of reports was commissioned which resulted in Tom Schuller and David Watson presenting their book Learning Through Life: Inquiry Into the Future for Lifelong Learning. On publication in 2009, the IFLL report was classed by its authors as “the
One could argue that Informal Education is all the rage these days. The ability to consider anything as a potential learning experience is a powerful notion. Unfortunately, this also means that we have seen the demise of formal arenas for developing informal learning. But we do have some remedies, if only we would wake up
Warning to self: Don’t ignore the stuff you already know, but may have forgotten. In the process of my research, it is interesting noting the different interpretations of the idea of ‘social’ – wherever the word is applied. What seems like something we should all thirst for, is, to some, totally abhorrent. Some people just