Preface: Reflections on the Last Frontier of the Learning Society

The publication of New Pathways for Aging comes at an opportune time in our country because the graying of American society has become an increasingly prominent theme in the media. Recently major news magazines have reported how in 1960 one in eleven Americans was over 65 years of age, whereas today one in seven is, and by 2050 one in five will be. The implications of this aging trend are many and far-reaching, ranging from Social Security viability to health care access and skyrocketing medical costs for all Americans.

The graying of American society has not come as a surprise, for the trend has been in evidence for many years. Indeed, it was this very trend that motivated me to establish the Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement (HILR) in the spring of 1977 as a unique resource for mature, motivated, and talented men and women of retirement age who wanted to return to the university to pursue learning. The distinctive feature of HILR was peer teaching and learning whereby some members created and taught courses for their fellow members.

An inaugural meeting of the initial charter members of HILR was held in the library of the Harvard Faculty Club with the welcoming address provided by David Riesman, Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences at Harvard. Appropriately, Professor Riesman chose as his theme that, as a rule, learning was wasted on the young and that true learning occurred among people like the HILR charter members who sought learning as an end in itself.

Over more than 30 years HILR subsequently grew to a dynamic assemblage of more than 550 members comprised of women and men who represented a broad range of professions. As dean I have the pleasure of welcoming the new members each fall and spring at their orientation sessions, and as I invariably tell them, their remarkable credentials read like a veritable Who’s Who of American society.

Over the years HILR members have been addressed by the presidents of Harvard and Radcliffe, all of whom recognized the distinctive role they play on the Harvard campus. Perhaps President Neil Rudenstine said it best when he told HILR members that Harvard University as an educational institution knew a great deal about the educational spectrum from pre-school to post-graduate doctoral studies. Where it was deficient in its knowledge was among retirees like the HILR members, and he regarded them as the last frontier of higher education, especially as society aged.

Which brings me to the volume that follows, New Pathways for Aging. The promise of HILR as an educational experiment at Harvard has again justified itself by the personal essays collected in this significant volume. As society ages, the HILR contributors to New Pathways provide insightful and informed perspectives on what this stage of life entails, its promises and perils. But the abiding theme presented is a distillation of wisdom, of hope, of collegiality, and of creativity in the last frontier.

About a decade ago I remember reading Adaptation to Life, a seminal study by Dr. George E. Vaillant, Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Study of Adult Development at Harvard University. Based on data originally collected between 1939 and 1942 on the life styles of healthy college men, the Grant Study, as it was called, amassed longitudinal data on these more than 250 subjects over a lifetime to ascertain who coped successfully with stress and setbacks and who did not. Using case histories, Dr. Vaillant explored patterns of behavior that he termed “adaptive mechanisms.” Throughout our lives we must adapt if we are to be successful and, as the essays in this volume indicate so dramatically, our ability to adapt as we age, especially in our post-retirement years, is crucial to our mental health and our sense of personal and intellectual fulfillment.

When viewed from the perspective of Dr. Vaillant’s research on aging, the role of HILR takes on a new significance, as do the essays included in this volume. We in the United States are indeed graying, but we are also becoming a learning society thanks to the rapid growth of lifelong learning institutes across our country. The insights provided by the HILR members demonstrate that such learning communities make it easier to adapt to life and to share the joy and excitement of teaching and learning on the last frontier of the learning society.

As dean I am proud of HILR in general and of the achievements of the editors and contributors to this path-making volume of personal essays in particular. I am confident that the contents of this volume will prove of great interest and value to all HILR members as well as to all members of the now roughly 400 learning in retirement institutes around the United States. They show how the graying of American society can indeed be a golden time for us seniors, myself included. Let it be.

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