Researching Older Learners

Researching Older Learners Paper for the ESREA conference, Bremen, 8-11 March 2001

 Dr Pamela M Clayton Department of Adult and Continuing Education University of Glasgow

Introduction This presentation is based on a survey of adult returners to learning, conducted in the west of Scotland in the 1990s and funded by the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council. The methodology consisted of life history interviews covering family background, schooling, post-school education and training, paid and unpaid work, experience of adult learning and the personal, social and economic outcomes of such learning. The subset under scrutiny here is that of older learners (arbitrarily defined as those aged sixty or more at the time of interview). The content of the presentation includes quantitative data but, more important, a qualitative description and analysis of features specific to older learners and of the interview experience from the point of view of the interviewer and the interviewee. The survey covered adults who had returned to some form of learning in the West of Scotland in the late 1980s to early 1990s. Participants were selected from five categories (education in the community1, liberal education2, access courses3, the Adults in Schools Programme4 and employersponsored education and training5) and some of the questions were specifically on one of these courses. Many adults selected from one programme, however, turned out to have participated in other kinds of programme too. Of the 105 adults in the survey, sixteen were aged sixty or over: eleven men and five women. Eight of these (five men and three women) were between sixty and sixty-four. The oldest, a man, was over eighty. All had been married - one of them three times. Ten were still living with a spouse; five were widowed; and one was divorced and lived with her unmarried daughter who was aged nineteen and working full time. Only three had never had children; twelve had grown-up children; and one, who had married late, still had dependent children. Three (two men and one woman) were still employed full-time, and one man was employed part time. One man and one woman were unemployed through disability; and the remaining ten were retired.

1

This includes the Community Education Service (CES) which provides, among others, short non-credit-bearing courses developed by the Open University; the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) which provides courses based in local areas and other similar initiatives. The sampling frame for students from the CES and the WEA consisted of all who took certain courses in one particular year.

2

The students in this survey were selected from DACE’s non-accredited programme in one particular year and were selected at random.

3

Access courses are intended to facilitate university entry for adults who may not have the usual formal requirements for entry. If a student gains a certain grade or number of credits, s/he is automatically accepted by the universities participating in the scheme. These courses are run by the Department of Adult and Continuing Education (DACE), University of Glasgow, and through colleges of further education. The DACE sampling frame consisted of all in one year’s intake and a random sample from the subsequent year. The SWAP sampling frame consisted of all who had entered the University of Glasgow through the programme in a certain year.

4

Under this programme adults are registered for specific courses in state secondary schools, sit in class with the children and take state exams. The sampling frame consisted of all the students whose names were submitted by their headmasters.

5

Only one of this sample was selected from this category.

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Two were still paying the mortgage on their accommodation; two were renting from a local authority or housing association; one was a life renter, living in the family home which was now owned by her children; one lived in tied accommodation in the retirement home where she worked; and ten owned their properties outright. It is difficult to compare living standards since different individuals would still have different costs of living; but taking a weekly net personal income of £200 or more as an arbitrary measure of relative affluence, half the sample were above this level and half below. The health of seven of the set was good; four had conditions which seriously affected their lifestyle, for example, preventing them from working; but five others had conditions which did not affect what they wanted to do. The serious conditions were long-term depression, angina, heart complaints, weak lungs and arthritis. Some had existed since childhood. One had had tuberculosis during his war service and had never fully recovered. Others had arthritis or conditions treatable by drugs, such as late onset diabetes and low thyroid. The oldest of the group, who is 81, swam every day in order to combat his arthritis (no. 29). All were white British. Fourteen had been born in Scotland (mainly in or near Glasgow); one was born and brought up in the South of England; and one had been born in Sri Lanka, where his father was a banker. Regarding ancestry, eleven are Scottish, one English, one English/Scottish, and three Scottish/ Irish. This mixture is not surprising in a major city like Glasgow, which attracted many immigrants: ‘My paternal grandfather moved from the Midlands of England as a pipe-fitting maker ... now that was some trade in those days’ (no. 10). ‘My father, of course, he came over from Northern Ireland ... with his brother. They worked as a team in what they called the Black Squad in the Clyde ... everyone who did the sort of heavy dirty work on ships was called the Black Squad’ (no. 53).

Emigration was also part of the picture: [Of my uncles] ‘one was a deep sea diver in the Far East, another was a planter in East Africa, one went to Canada and made a pile in the motor trade ... one left under a wee bit of a cloud for New Zealand and became a director of education’ (no. 12) ‘When you were out in India you had sixteen servants looking after you but when [my mother] came home to London she had a help who came three days a week or something, which was quite a change for her’ (no. 89).

Experience of the interviewer The first interviews had been done by someone else and were very scanty in the information recorded. They had not been taped nor even recorded verbatim. I re-interviewed as many as I could trace and was glad I had done so. Some of the interviews took place in my office, some in the interviewees’ own homes and one in my home. Most took place in private but on two occasions the spouse was present. In one case the wife was shocked at the nature of the questions, particularly on the financial situation of the family in the interviewee’s childhood; but the interviewee, who was more highly educated than his wife, said he had no problem telling me about it and it was fine if it added to knowledge (no. 10). In the other case the husband (himself a lifelong learner) added his observations on the benefits to his wife of her return to education but did not otherwise interrupt the interview (no. 48). This was the most enjoyable age-group to interview. On the whole they were talkative and open, and I got much more information than was expected or, perhaps, required! So what was most interesting about this set of interviews? As a nosy human being who was given the privilege of looking into others’ lives, or at least, at their accounts of their lives, I found everything interesting. What really interested me was their individual stories, rather than the reduction of these disparate individuals to a set of figures. As a sociologist and adult educator, however, the following were the most fascinating:

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• their lifetime experiences which allowed the interviewer a fascinating glimpse of the intertwining of personal and social history; • the kinds of social change that could be traced through their stories, in some cases over four generations; • their motivation for and experience of adult learning.

The personal and social history of the interviewees Glasgow, where most of this group lived as children, was and is a working-class city and suffered a great deal of poverty between the wars. Of this group, twelve came from families where the head of the family was unskilled or semi-skilled. It is not surprising, therefore, that eight reported that they had been very poor during at least part of their childhood - in some cases throughout their childhood. ‘It was a hunger or a burst each week ... there was plenty for a few days after the pay but for two or three days before the pay there was ... very scanty’ (no. 71). ‘We were very poor ... I was born in a single apartment, one room with two second-hand beds and everything all in the one’ (no. 48).

Some qualified their accounts of poverty. For example, two said that their mothers were careful managers and two said they were poor only when their fathers were unemployed. Deprivation was seen as relative - if there were others worse off, then you were not deprived: ‘Today you would probably look upon it as a deprived childhood but [...] I had a pair of shoes for during the week and a pair of shoes for Sundays’ (no. 30).

It is significant that of the eight who reported poverty, only one had a mother who worked and that was because the father had deserted the family. ‘My father left my mother with the two boys ... he rather bent the elbow and used to beat my mother up ... my mother had to work full time ... I was in a children’s home for a few years, and then my mother managed to get a flat and we were together from about twelve onwards’ (no. 29).

Where mothers and fathers both had jobs, a further four were able to report that, although not affluent, their family finances had been quite adequate. ‘My father ... was the last of Kitchener’s volunteers ... because of the war and my father being away, [my mother] took in dressmaking and she kept that up till two or three years before she died. So she really was one of the advanced people’ (no. 34).

Typical jobs for working-class men were in mines, shipyards and engineering. In addition, one was a barber, one a house painter and one a carter and sometime tram driver. Typical jobs for the few mothers who were employed were in weaving, dressmaking and cleaning, though one became a shop manager during the war and one supported her family through clerical work. The farmer’s wife worked on the farm, unpaid, although she contributed to the family income. Four were from middle-class backgrounds: their fathers were, respectively, a farmer, the owner of a small carpentry firm, a bank teller and a bank manager who finally became general manager of his banking firm. All lived in private houses. Only one described their financial situation as ‘very comfortable’; others said ‘comfortable but not rich’, ‘not bad’ (although his father had had their house built) or ‘satisfactory but not luxurious’. Although some came from larger families, they were questioned only on the number of siblings living at home during their childhood. Six had had three or more such siblings; eight had one or two; and two were only children. Large families were not necessarily a sign of poverty but in some cases contributed to it. Number of siblings, therefore, provides an indication of living conditions only when put together with other data. For example, of those with three or more siblings at home, one had a comfortable middle-class existence; four were very poor throughout their childhood; and one had 3

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swung between extreme poverty and ‘normal’ poverty depending on whether or not his father was employed. On the other hand, three from smaller families had a deprived childhood. Childhood housing situation illustrates part of Scottish social history. Three lived in a single room or a room and kitchen; one moved up to a room and kitchen plus wash-house; two lived in a two-room tenement. Thus six lived in poor housing conditions. [We lived in] ‘a room and a kitchen in the second floor of a tenement ... the street was very narrow and the gasworks was just up the road. I never noticed the smell until I went back to see the place later on pretty horrendous. The only redeeming feature about it was that it was adjacent to the park and to Glasgow Green, so we were able to get among some greenery from time to time’ (no. 71).

A further four benefited from the slum clearances: ‘We were moved out of a tenement at George’s Cross [because of] overcrowding. It was just a room and a kitchen and there were five of us’ (no. 24).

These were re-housed in decent council accommodation, which they appreciated despite the ‘breakup of communities’ regretted by some sociologists. ‘It was a wee miners’ row, I think it was only one bedroom and one living-room, and the sink and everything was in the same room ... we had no water or anything, it was just a big pump at the bottom and you had to fill your pail! No electricity ... it was paraffin lamps ... [but] it was like one big family in the row and if anybody was ill, well, there was always somebody there to help ... [then] we came over to Cross House ... we had two bedrooms ... it was great when we came over here! You could switch a light on and turn the tap’ (no. 65).

Five lived in private houses, including one whose father was a shipyard worker and often unemployed, but the mother had been given a house by her father. That almost half had been seriously ill as children reflects mainly worse levels of health during the inter-war years, as three of the seven who reported this were from middle-class families. In addition, one, although healthy as a child, had had his schooling seriously interrupted by being evacuated during the war. One had unexpectedly benefited from illness: ‘I was in hospital with scarlet fever for seven weeks when I was seven and that’s where I learned to read. The male patients used to spell out words for me in the newspaper’ (no. 71).

Parental education also reflects the social conditions of the interviewees’ childhood. In eleven cases, both parents had left school at or below the minimum leaving age and without qualifications, whatever their abilities. ‘Mother was very bright but she was the oldest of eight so she was out of school as soon as possible. Funnily enough, when she died I was clearing out and I found a letter from the Headmaster of the school pleading with my grandfather to let her stay’ (no. 08).

These included two middle-class families. Four of the fathers and at least two of the mothers had attended grammar school, which entailed either paying fees or winning a scholarship. Nevertheless three families with at least one parent with a grammar school education lived in relative poverty. Their parents’ attitude to their children’s education was generally encouraging. All but one family wanted their children to do well and work hard, but few could afford to let them stay at school after the minimum leaving age. Another factor in childhood education was the war. Several had been evacuated or lost their schools: ‘The war intervened ... after my second year the school was closed down and we had some lessons in the YMCA’ (no. 53). ‘It was wartime, of course, earlier on, and we had to wander out over the town because the school had been bombed and we wandered for various classes to the public library and to the Old Town House’ (no. 12). ‘At the beginning of the war I was evacuated and then I came home because I broke my ankle in school. I went to Dumbarton Academy and then we were blitzed out and went to Ayrshire’ (no. 08).

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‘I lived during the second world war and was evacuated when I was eleven, for three months, and when I came back all the schools had been closed as they assumed that all the children would be away at different schools in different areas. When I came back there was a sort of no-man’s-world in education for about six months ... I enjoyed it thoroughly!’ (no. 86)

Most of the interviewees had enjoyed secondary school: ‘I liked it ... it was the period when I began to become a bit brighter ... things started to make sense to me’ (no. 24). ‘I liked school. Sometimes it was an escape from the family, the house, the background, the poverty. It was a wee dreamland’ (no. 48).

Secondary school was generally felt to be much better than primary school: ‘School teachers in the primary, in this day and age, they would probably be locked up, the majority of them ... no matter how hard you tried, unless you got a correct answer, you were going to get belted ... But Miss Johnson [in secondary school] was a wonderful teacher. I learned under Miss Johnson’ (no. 30).

Some had less happy memories: ‘It was an unhappy experience, secondary school - I failed the exams. Education at that time wasn’t very bright ... I liked reading books [but] I can’t recall anything in secondary school that was very interesting, anything that held my attention’ (no. 86). ‘I didn’t like my teachers! Not generally - some of them, especially just at the end of the war when - it was all ladies apart from some very old men, then the soldier-teachers came back from the war and they were a bit rough ... I think it was a bad thing ... If you said something wrong you’d get shouted at, so you tended not to say anything’ (no. 38). ‘I was bullied a good bit ... When I was at school I always felt haunted ... there was this wee person which was me, sitting there, and I wasn’t able to learn, and everybody else was better at everything and - I just wanted away from them’ (no.71).

One had mixed feelings: ‘I went to public school during the war ... I didn’t enjoy school when there was corporal punishment - I didn’t enjoy getting the cane - I didn’t enjoy having to go out for long runs in the snow and having cold baths every morning ... and I didn’t enjoy exams much either ... [but] I think it broadened my horizons and gave me new interests and I made friends. I liked sport’ (no. 89).

Only the five living in private houses stayed at school after the minimum school leaving age and gained higher level qualifications. Of these, one man and two women had immediately gone on to take university degrees. Reasons for finally leaving the parental home were varied: five men had left to join the armed forces, one to work away, four on getting married and one for other reasons. Of the women, two had left on marriage but three had gone into residential training in the health care sector.

Social change and working life There was little evidence of inter-generational social mobility in the interviewees’ family background. Occupations often changed (for example, from quarry master to owner of a small carpentry business, or from brickworks foreman to miner) but class in broad terms rarely did. Working-class grandfathers were followed by working-class fathers and mothers (grandmothers had rarely had paid work), and the middle classes similarly replicated themselves. Greater changes are evident between interviewees and their parents. For example, seven could be said to have moved from unskilled or semi-skilled working class backgrounds into middle-class occupations. Five had remained in the middle class and two in the working class, but one had gone from a middle-class background into semi-skilled work and another, whose grandfather was probably middle class and whose father had turned from picture house manager to unskilled labourer, had had at least twentyfour jobs in his life, ranging from labourer to assistant manager on a national newspaper. 5

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Nevertheless, the general picture is of upward mobility or retaining of the status quo. This accords with sociological research on the subject. Although data on the interviewees’ children was not specifically collected, there is evidence that the biggest jump takes place between the interviewees and their children. Although only five of the interviewees were university graduates (and two of these had obtained their degrees late in life), seven of the thirteen who were parents had children who were graduates and two had children who were taking degrees or were likely to do so. None appeared to have children in unskilled occupations. ‘New occupations’ are in evidence among the interviewees, including a financial advertiser, the international advertising manager for a large textile firm and a sheltered housing warden. Indeed, almost half the group worked or had worked in the tertiary sector, though manufacturing had also been an important source of employment. There was an irony in the way some of the interviewees were connected by their work experiences. One had developed tuberculosis (TB): ‘I went into the Air Force ... when I was demobbed I was a skeleton - had a spot on the lung - we lived in very primitive conditions’ (no. 53).

Another had benefited from the prevalence of TB: ‘It was in the days when TB was rife and I was just a wee lassie, had romantic ideas about being an angel of mercy ... TB was in its heyday, it was a great time!’ (no. 48)

There were also two ‘men from the Pru’6. One had gone ‘to the Prudential as a filing-clerk - you can’t get any lower than that!’ (no. 29) and had risen to a relatively high position in the insurance industry. The other had a very different experience: ‘I went to insurance, the Prudential, and it was all right, I suppose, up to a point, but it was in a very poor area ... they were knocking down houses wholesale ... I wasn’t selling any policies and also there were several families in the area who were very, very poor, I think because of the actions of the people who were supposed to support them. And many times I went down to the shop - I didn’t get any money from them, but I went down to the shop and bought milk and bread and took it up ... finally it was getting to me so much that I was breaking down and crying ... I think ambition plus avarice was all the training you needed!’ (no. 71)

One remembered his first job very vividly: ‘I became an apprentice quantity surveyor ... I made the tea, ran the errands and was embarrassed going to ask for the boss’s wife’s corsets at Cochrane’s! I still remember that, going into the ladies’ department!’ (no. 38)

Later he described the decline of his own firm: ‘I was in partnership ... we were expanding and then we seemed to get smaller and smaller and disappeared’ (no. 38).

Another had been an early entrant into what was then considered a glamorous career: ‘Advertising was really considered, when I was a young man, a very admirable profession. It was not as high as film stars or things like that, but there was a high ratio of divorce - so you were always considered a bit risqué - not quite respectable’ (no. 34).

One example that I found particularly interesting was that of a doctor who married a District Officer in the colonial service and lived in Sierra Leone, where I had also lived and worked at a later date. As she said: ‘one had to work, unless one had no conscience’ (no. 50).

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The Prudential is a well-known insurance company which used to employ door-to-door salesmen and payment collectors.

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One interesting finding was that fourteen of the sixteen were or had been actively engaged in community or voluntary work or were members, or in some cases officials, of clubs and associations. Most of this set of interviewees had retired and now had more time to devote to these activities but many had been active in this way for many years even while they were employed.

Adult learners Many had been lifelong learners but it was only in later life that the majority could or did take up the opportunity to study what really interested them, and the most important motivation by far for return to study was to develop knowledge. Contrary to a ‘popular’ view that older people go to classes in order to socialise, only two stated this among their reasons and in neither case was this the only reason. One man stated that since women were in the great majority in his classes, he naturally did not make friends! Having said that, some went to classes with their friends; and four unexpectedly made friends or met interesting people through adult education. Other unexpected benefits included class visits to Russia by two who had joined the Adults in Schools Programme, development of confidence, and the inspiration to start a local history society of which he is the chair to this day. Only one was really disappointed with his return to education (no. 86). He had looked forward to a structured learning environment (but with no specific subject interest to organise this around), but despite expressing the opinion that student-teacher relations had not changed since his schooldays, he also siad he did not find the academic discipline he felt he needed. The only other whose initial hopes were not fulfilled was a man whose grades at the end of his Access course were not high enough to get him into the University of Glasgow (no. 24), but he had already found that age and declining health were making it difficult for him to keep up with younger people and had no regrets. When I interviewed him he had just acquired a new woman friend, who was perhaps destined to become his fourth wife, and he was very content with his life. Few remembered any serious problems. The one who had sought academic discipline found he was academically under-prepared and another who had had to take many training courses in order to keep his job found he learnt little new and moreover, when his wife became seriously ill, was ‘worried sick’ all the time he was away (no. 53). Once he retired and became a widower he started taking liberal education courses and thoroughly enjoyed them (‘the most enjoyable of all is learning just to suit yourself’) until his car became too unreliable to take him to the venue. Only three reported problems with memory and this did not reflect age as much as the type of course studied. The oldest man enjoyed his courses partly because ‘I don’t have to swot’ (no. 34) and was among the six who said they had had no problems at all. Academic courses with exams, especially in foreign languages, were the most demanding in terms of retention and retrieval of information for the eldest in the sample. Two found it hard to concentrate because of physical or mental health problems, and two found study cut into their active social lives too much. In general, however, adult education had been a very positive and life-enhancing experience which the interviewees felt had made significant changes to them, and almost all said they would - and often did - recommend that others take it up. All but four said that adult education had changed their attitude to education in general and most had either developed new interests or had learned how to pursue existing interests in a more structured way. Those who had participated in the Adults in Schools Programme had developed greater understanding and appreciation of young people and of how hard they had to work at school. Perhaps the greatest life change was that of a man who had retired because of ill health from a skilled manual job, taken a degree and was now teaching English in Spain (no. 7). Some felt they had benefited intellectually, for example, by being able to think more clearly or looking at life in a different way. One, for example, commented that it was good ‘to hear about things that you never thought of and I started looking at things with a slightly different outlook’ (no. 38). Six (two women and three men) reported an increase in confidence. The husband of one interviewee told me: ‘I felt she was expressing a side of herself that had been put into the shadows’ (no. 48). 7

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It gave a focus and structure to some lives. For example, one ‘felt it was meaningful ... I was getting up in the morning and I had this to do’ (no. 48). For some it was literally a life-saver. A former doctor said: ‘inevitably as one gets older one gets a bit fed up with what life’s not like (...) compared with what it was, and it fills a gap ... and surely it must help one not to vegetate too early ... if more people did that they wouldn’t have to go into old people’s homes maybe, and that would be less expensive for the government’ (no. 50).

Another said: ‘I think it’s basically keeping me alive ... I was fortunate enough to be able to ensure that I’d be financially fairly well provided for, but that’s not the be-all and end-all, and it’s just a question of keeping an interest and keeping alive’ (no. 29).

As for their current education and future plans, thirteen were either still attending courses or planned to do so as long as their health allowed. Eight were involved in self-directed learning projects. Only one had no plans for any kind of study once she had finished her current course (which was workrelated).

Conclusion This group contained on individuals who were relatively affluent and poor, well-educated and unqualified, of working-class and middle-class origins, men and women. Some could afford to pay, others could not have returned to education had it not been free. Whatever their original or current situation, all had worked hard and long in employment or self-employment and suffered war and in some cases deprivation and ill-health. The opportunity for them to return to education was, in my view, a just reward. For all but one it had been a positive and life-enhancing experience, with some unexpected benefits as well as the ones they initially hoped for. They provided glimpses of a past world, when Glasgow was a great industrial city with a large and mobile proletariat; when poor people lived in cramped and primitive conditions, until the great slum clearance schemes following the second world war; when ill-health and child mortality were common; when primary teachers often ‘taught’ through violence, and wartime evacuation interrupted education; when working-class children left school as soon as they legally could, if not earlier, because their parents could not afford to keep them on at school; and when upward social mobility began to change working lives and the welfare state provided better opportunities for their children than most of them had had. Their present lives were very active, with most involved in voluntary work or club membership and many still attending classes or engaged in self-directed learning projects. Far from attending courses in order to meet people, the most common motivation was to gain or develop knowledge of particular subjects. Surprisingly few reported that declining memory was a problem in studying, even among those who had taken academic courses, though these did tend to be the most demanding of memory and concentration. As an educator of adults, including older adults, for twenty years, I can say that these interviewees seemed representative of individuals in the classes I used to teach - keen, interesting and interested, with a smattering of quirky individuals!

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