Waiting

I guess everyone is on vacation this summer, and that is why so few blogs have been posted recently.  I have held off for a couple of reasons (1) embarrassment that my blogs seem to be the only ones showing up lately, and (2) loneliness because I feel has though I have been talking to myself in these blogs.  Anyway, here I go again spouting ideas to the wind.......Cleaning off my coffee table (how often do you do that?) I picked up a January 2010 (yes, I said January) copy of The New York Times insert called Education Times.  It had an article about how older adults learn.  Bottom line, what it says is not new - because training and adult education is a field I went to graduate school for - but, there are some points that jumped out: 

1. With longevity increasing, middle age now stretches from the 40s to the late 60s (who knew?)
2. Despite all the hoopla in print about deteriorating mental capacity as one ages, our brains "continue to develop"   through and beyond our sixties.
3. Our learning becomes less facts-and-information (tell that to our media and technology geeks) and more  "association" with what we already know
4. The brain "is plastic and continues to change...allowing for "greater complexity and deeper understanding " of information that is already stored in it. (therefore, "association")
5. The best way the brain develops in later years is to "bump up" agains multiple viewpoints that challenge our assumptions (well, isn't that what education is about anyway?)
6. Get out of our comfort zone, don't always hang around those people or ideas we already agree with (or know about)
7. Challenge our own "ingrained perceptions" (everything? eeks!)
8. "As adults we have all those brain pathways built up and we need to look at our (own) insights critically." (Jack Mezirow, Columbia Teachers College)

Does that mean I have to start taking Generation X seriously, for example? (Now there's a challenge.)  However, one major theme in the article is this: don't worry about facts (or names) you can't remember; books you've forgotten you read; movies you've forgotten you saw, distractedness, missplaced keys, etc.  Just keep "scrambling your cognitive egg"  with new ideas and look for "disorienting dilemmas...(that help) you critically reflect" on your assumptions.  I think we used to call that wisdom.

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