I had a meeting last week with some people involved in adult education. As a writer who counts teaching creative writing as one of her jobs, it’s an area that I hover at the fringes of. On the one hand, yes, I teach adults (some of the time) – they are evening classes; they are for self-improvement; they are usually people who come not just in search of facts and figures but how to apply what they already know to what they’re trying to do next and how to learn in this new field. On the other hand, they are not practical in the sense of providing one with a certificate that can be used to go on and do something else with; they are not things you pass or fail.
I’m on the fringes of ‘ordinary’ education too. I’m not an English teacher. I sometimes go into English classes or school libraries, but I’m not there to teach the syllabus and get students passing their exams. I teach on specialist programmes, things that complement the ‘normal’ education people get in school. So it maybe wasn’t too surprising that I found myself surprised by the way ‘adult education’ was conceptualised as something opposed to ‘ordinary education’, as though children will simply absorb whatever you say without questioning its purpose while adults need to see the relevance of something to their own experience. When we talked about the kinds of activities that might be suitable to adult ed, I found myself drawing on activities I use at a summer course I teach to/facilitate for teenagers. It seems so bizarre to me that lines are drawn between the adult ed student and the regular student, the grown-up and the adolescent. When you teach the stuff that’s not on the syllabus, in environments where learners are more often than not there because they want to be, you see the similarities much more than the differences.
The same week, I read yet another book about gifted children, When Gifted Kids Don’t Have All The Answers. One of the specialist programmes I teach on is aimed at gifted kids and teens, and it’s an area that fascinates me, so I try to keep up with the books and guides and research as much as I can. There’s one part that stays with me – a comment about how we so often tell kids it’s okay ‘as long as they did their best’ or we tell them ‘just do your best’. At everything. And it asks us, how many adults do we know that do their best at everything they do?
We live in an era of retraining and career-shifting, a time when adults are often continuing education formally or informally, trying to improve themselves or change themselves. We see what works for adult learners and we develop new ways of teaching and facilitating accordingly. I just wonder how much of that we can apply to younger learners, rather than assuming they are somehow ‘built’ to learn or that there are skills necessary for learning that we want young people to have but don’t have ourselves and somehow manage to get by. There are things that younger learners don’t know, haven’t experienced, have trouble with, sure – but they’re not entirely different creatures.
For any of the rest of you, readers or contributors, what do you think of the differences between learning as an adult and learning at a ‘standard’ age? Do we expect something different from our experiences learning as an adult – or do we respond to the different way we’re taught?
Anthea McTeirnan
Croí na Duibhlinn
Aoife Barry
Aoife McLysaght
Arlene Hunt
Attracta McCarthy-McKenna
clairehennessy
Ann Cronin
Amanda Brown
Eleanor Fitzsimons
Edel Coffey
Anna Carey
Lauren Murphy
Jennie Ridyard
Jude Leavy
Hazel Katherine Larkin
Léan Ní Chuilleanáin
Leigh
Lisa McInerney
Laura Slattery
Maman Poulet
Megan McGurk
Clare Kleinedler
Molly
Rosita Boland
Catherine Crichton
Sinéad Gleeson
sarahefranklin
siobhandowling
Susan Daly
theantiroom
Nuala Ní Chonchúir
It was really interesting to read this. I am a bit of an education junkie so I have been educated in many different of virtual and physical environments over the years.
I do think that learning as an adult is quite different. When I was studying at physical universities the mature students were generally far better than the normal ones (not necessarily reflected in marks though) because they knew why they were there and could apply it to the real world. For example I used to know a lot about mathematical modelling but I never once realized that I could apply this to real life. I saw it purely as something I needed to do know how to do to get my degree. Only years later did I think to myself that I was actually learning a real skill back them.
As a working adult and worker I did an MBA and that was totally different because I went out of my way to choose assignments that related to what I was working at, I was applying what I learned immediately. Now I am doing an OU degree in Arts and again my approach to essays is far different than what it would have been years ago when only marks counted. Now I want to write beautiful essays that can add something to my life, marks don’t really mattter except that they provide a benchmark.
Where I have most experience is language classes. As an adult I have taken classes in French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Polish, Swedish, Japanese and Italian. I try to apply every language I learn from day one. Although I took Irish and French at school I did not independently read a French novel until about seven years ago and I finished my first non-school novel in Irish maybe three years ago. Although there were native Irish speakers in my school I never had the wit to speak to them in anything but English except when we were doing Irish debating. I did speak French to French people but I never read French newspapers or tuned in to RFI or whatever.
I think that the reason for that was because I was so confident that I knew it all because the education system was rewarding me with high marks.
As an adult of course I realize how arrogant my attitude to education used to be. I regret not learning more at school and in my first universities. Luckily though we are living in a time where the well of knowledge is available to all. If I want to I can go to OpenCoursware and find the materials to learn anything I want. I love now.
I’ve just been having a chat with the English Resource teacher in my son’s school- she was filling me in on the Finnish education system. They have come out tops in the Pisa-I think- study and have a very radical view of education. Teachers/Schools design their own curriculum based on the needs/interests of the students. There is no inspectorate- the dept of education trusts that teachers will be committed to doing their best for children.
I have been working in Adult Education in a Literacy centre in Dublin 1 for 12 years and we too have the same opportunity to design the curriculum. We get to meet the needs of the students not an imposed curriculum. Adult Education can be quite radical in Ireland. But rather than just clean up the mess left by mainstream education which is exam driven, the adult ed sector needs to be able to feed into policy more directly. To pass on the lessons learned.
As a parent, I’m very happy that the Educate Together School my son attends shares many of my values in education. I’m worried though that unless we get to overhaul secondary education it will kill the desire to learn creatively that my sons’ have. Minister Quinn will have to support the patronage of Educate Together Secondary Schools. But as parents we will have to trust that the outdated system of points only prepares our children for exams and doesn’t prepare them for the future world of work where they will need to be creative, collaborative, risk takers. We parents need to let go of our fear of the unknown and create a better system of learning that rewards the efforts of all children and not just the academic ones.
Now this is very interesting. I trained adults on American Federal Equal Opportunities Act– sexual harassment issues. I have taught Constitutional Law at University level, I taught Spanish to children 9-13 and I have taught Religious Education to teenagers.
I pretty much used the same techniques for all. I provided the information needed to learn about each particular subject in an interesting manner, with the intent to teach that particular subject matter. I would start with a plan… the three most important things that were required to be learned, made sure I repeated those in different ways.
I tried never to treat my students in a condescending manner even when I felt like it. I always respected them, children, adults and sexist pigs. I listened to their questions, allowed them participation, and searched for different ways to explain complicated issues.
I tried to apply what I was teaching to the realities of my students, so that they felt they could relate and that the information I was teaching them was helpful to them.
We don’t always talk to different people the same way, we adjust naturally, but we remain ourselves– or I do anyway. I used that to determine how to teach a given class or subject. But essentially, I believe its the subject matter that determines the differences not age.
Is the difference not simply that adults are choosing to be there so you’re pretty much guaranteed their interest and interactivity, whereas kids are usually there because they have to be, and many have zero interest and are just waiting for the bell (as are the teachers sometimes!)?
I’m not in education, so it’s just a thought…
I agree with you, but as a teacher and a student I always felt that gaining the students trust and interest lies with the teacher. When I had a curriculum forced upon me as an educator I would “try” to follow it. But my concern was getting the students interest– even the ones that did not want to be there (My favorite challenge). I failed a couple of times, but I used that failure to improve my technique.
I truly believe teachers have the power to engage the students. And many a teacher does not care.
As a religion teacher of teenagers for 9 years, I can tell you none of them wanted to be there. But I had perfect attendance after the first weeks… and this was a voluntary class. But believe me if I had to stand on my head to get their attention I would. (thankfully never had to do that) I proved to them, that what they were being taught in my class was going to be useful. To this day, kids contact me to thank me for being there for them.
I would have counted as a “gifted child” if they’d had such things in the 1970s (or if my mum had thought it was a good idea for children to be singularised in that way). I’m really not sure which, and it’s four decades too late to worry about it.
I found primary school in many ways very frustrating, I now realise (at the time that was just how it was) because of a number of factors: A lot of time and effort was focussed on teaching the other children how to read, and I either got tossed in with groups who were reading well below my level, or was left to read on my own (which I enjoyed, of course, but still…): I was shortsighted and no one noticed till I was 7, sometime in primary 3: my best friend since I was two was a boy (and was gone for an entire term when I was 6, when his parents went to America): and most of the time, I found the schoolwork easy to dull, and my classmates boring and intimidating.
“Reading lessons”, until I finally got out of them, bored me very nearly to insanity – I went to a child psychologist when I was 7 because I appeared to be forgetting how to read (sometime in primary 2). I think now, remembering the hopeless boredom of sitting at a desk, having finished quickly the set of questions I’d been given that presumed I’d have difficulty reading/understanding a short piece of text, and having nothing else I was allowed to do for what seemed a hopeless span of time till everyone else was done, that my mind was just convincing me it would be easier if I didn’t know how to read. This happened less in secondary school, but thinking back I’m pretty sure that was because I’d got better at figuring out ways to mentally occupy my time which were less conspicuous than falling off my seat with boredom.
(I did well in my O-grades, badly in my Highers, worse in my A-Levels: like many too-bright children, I’d never really learned to work at a subject.)
I found the difference between secondary school and polytechnic, when I got there, was profound and astonishing: I agree with Jennie Ridyard, though, that a lot of it is that in further education, the students are there because we wanted to be: and the lecturers were well aware of that. Even then, there was a difference between the students who’d come directly from school, and still seemed to think of life as a classroom, and those of us (I was one of the youngest) who were “mature students” – who had definitely, consciously chosen to take this degree, in this institution, because of what it would give us.
Havig dipped my toe in the water of teaching creative writing myself, I found your post fascinating. But I do feel adult learners are different because they have chosen to be in hthe classroom. Teenagers go to a creative writing class because their parents and teachers think it’s good for them. Even college students are there because it’s just what you do, man.
Adult learning is powerful. It gives people a chance to look at life in a new way and to claim back time to be themselves.