They Call the Teacher "Sonny"

By Ellie McGrath

Students over 60 flock to academe in the Elderhostel program

On U.S. campuses from Maui to Massachusetts, more than 45,000 seniors are going back to school this summer. They are studying everything from quasars to Hawaiian quilt-making, Plato to paleobiology. Some are traveling to archaeological sites in Israel; others are bird watching in Virginia. They may wake up stiff after sleeping on cots and feel even less comfortable about communal bathrooms. Like other college students, they undoubtedly grouse about cafeteria food. But there is one big difference between these seniors and the ones who donned caps and gowns a month or so ago: their average age is 68.

These new-old students are participants in Elderhostel, a program that combines the low cost of youth-hostel living with the challenge of college courses. The only admission requirement is that students be at least 60 years old (or accompanied by a senior citizen). Founded by former Teacher Martin Knowlton, 64, Elderhostel picks up where most adult-education classes leave off. After spending four years walking through Europe and observing adult-education programs, Knowlton came back to the U.S. determined to eliminate "a lot of the negatives associated with retirement." He believes that "when you're older you learn every bit as well as you ever learned in your life and probably better." Knowlton started the first Elderhostel in 1975 at New England College in Henniker N.H. Since then the program has grown mostly by word of mouth. Some foundations and corporations contributed to its development, but the Boston-based enterprise is nearly self-supporting now, with 80,000 students at 750 educational institutions in the U.S. and abroad paying $24 million this year. Part of its success comes from its modest price: one week of courses, room and board costs under $200 in the continental U.S.

The other key to Elderhostel's success is that it is stimulating without being too strenuous. Faculty members at host colleges and universities create their own curriculums, and academic difficulty varies accordingly. Required homework is taboo, but elders are often given the regular college syllabus for reading on their own. At Whittier College in California last month, Elderhostelers began their day at 8 a.m. with breakfast followed by a 9 o'clock class called American Politics on Film. A 10:30 class offered hands-on training with Apple computers. Afternoons, everyone hopped into the shallow end of the college pool for a course called Aquasize, or aquatic exercise. Dinner was at 6 p.m., followed by a 7 p.m. screening of the movie to be discussed at the next morning's politics class.

Elderhostelers are generally seeking adventure, but many arrive with specific goals. Nearly 60% have college degrees, and 30% have been schoolteachers. Edwin Slocum, 91, a former accountant from Van Nuys, Calif., took a computer course at Whittier. His reason: "When my grandchildren begin talking about computers they lose me fast." Estella Bagnell, 85, a former bookkeeper now living in Tampa, took a course in writing family history at Rollins College in Florida because she wants to put her research on the genealogy of the Bagnell family into narrative form for her eleven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Elderhostel provides a camaraderie that many older people find missing from their lives. Says Mary Fox, 68, a former teacher: "The courses are terrific, but the people themselves are the best." At the end of Whittier College's program, Louise O'Farrell, 63, a retired bookkeeper, and Margaret Berlier, 72, a former teacher, made plans to meet again in London at an August Elderhostel. O'Farrell has attended 20 Elderhostel courses so far, ranging from entomology and botany at Eastern Kentucky University to Victorian art at the University of London. Says she: "Getting the Elderhostel catalogue is like getting a wish book for Christmas."

Teachers find that Elderhostel students can be refreshingly different from seniors of traditional college age. Says Arnold Wettstein, a professor of religion at Rollins College: "These people know who they are and are quite willing to look at the professor and say, 'Now, Sonny, you don't have this straight.' " In one communications class at the University of 1 Northern Colorado, the teacher chose the bombing of Pearl Harbor "as an example of the result of poor communications. She was challenged by one of her students, who turned out to be a retired Air Force general. Besides their experience and sense of history, elders provide another plus for professors. Observes George C. Higgins Jr., who teaches an Elderhostel course in psychopathology at Trinity College in Connecticut: "They are not trying to get a high score so they can get into law school or compete for a job. The thing that's marvelous is that they are all interested in ideas." --ByEllieMcGrath. Reported by Cheryl Crooks/Los Angeles and Sara White/Boston

With reporting by Cheryl Crooks, Sara White