Adult continuing education is healthy for anyone
You can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Nonsense. Adults have many learning advantages over younger people. Read startling facts about the adult brain and memory. Who can learn a list of foreign names best – kids or adults? You might be surprised by the answer.
Adult continuing education is very practical. Seniors have several advantages over youth, namely: better memory (truly!), better experience, fewer distractions, better exams, easier retraining for a new job and easier self-employment.
1. Better memory: Doctors thought that you couldn’t grow new brain cells, so as old cells died you became more stupid. They now know that the more adult continuing education, the more new brain cells you get. You can even delay Alzheimer’s disease by keeping your brain active.
But old people keep forgetting things! That’s true, because what you remember best are startling, new, shocking things. To an old person it’s a case of “been there, done that”. Nothing is new or shocking.
However, you often have to learn boring things, and there you have an advantage. Seniors trounced the kids in a test of memorizing meaningless words. My book about exams will show you how to make your adult continuing education more exciting, which cuts kid’s advantage over your memory.
2. Experience: You learn from the known to the unknown. So it’s logical that the more experience you have, the more you can think “yes… that’s right… it’s just like…”. I am 65 years old now and I can say that my adult continuing education keeps getting easier because there are always relevant things in my experience.
3. Distractions: You may have distractions at work still, but let’s face it, are they really as obsessive as your teenage interests? You aren’t going to have to choose between going out on a date and doing some study. You might have to choose between having a nap and study, but my book about exams shows a way round that problem. I’m using it right now!
4. Better exams: Just as your three advantages apply to study, they apply to exams. Were you sick with nerves in your school exams? Your life-career depended on your performance. Now it would be nice to pass, but your experience tells you that you will survive failure, and land on your feet again…so less nerves.
Unless children have wealthy or helpful parents they can’t afford resources that you can afford. For instance, they can afford my free report on writing essays, but not my eBook about passing exams. If you live in a country with timed local phone calls, kids may not be able to do much research on the internet because it costs too much.
There are ways to become a lightning calculator and ways to develop a super memory, and you can afford them all. If you want to learn a language you can probably even afford to get a “super learning” course that teaches you the language in only fifteen hours.
Why adult continuing education? All right, you have advantages, but why should you bother with adult continuing education? Because it prevents brain deterioration, it gives you the chance of retraining for a new job and the chance of self-employment.
I’ve already covered the effect of study on the brain. You get new brain cells.
5. Retraining for a new job: In modern times you can only expect to keep one job for a short time. You are going to need to retrain for your next job.
6. Self-employment: You can’t be sacked if you are self-employed, but you can go broke. It is best to develop your home business part-time until it is earning you twice as much as your job. Then if you are retrenched from your job you won’t care.
Then you won’t need to worry about adult continuing education any more will you? Oops… you will need to keep learning even more when you have your own business. For instance, you are going to have to learn book-keeping unless you can afford an accountant to do the work. If you have to employ people, you will need to learn the laws that apply.
What method of learning should be used? I prefer to use a correspondence course for my adult continuing education. The comfort of studying from home is nowadays preferred by many adult students.
About the author: Pierre du Plessis (MBL, 1982, UNISA) is owner of Leaders Circle, with web site, Career Builders Club, catering for various niche related
products and packages and author of several e-books. This article can be used
for re-publishing as long as it remains unchanged.
Animated swivelling thinker and dreamer
