Education: They Call the Teacher Sonny

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.