January 19, 2000

Senior experience sharing revisited

The editor was kind enough to put a note at the tail end of this column last week. I had mentioned the value of older people in the classroom. He pointed out some ways volunteers, including the elderly, can help our school systems. I believe in volunteers, for many areas of life, and I believe in volunteering. I've been a volunteer for years. I was even a volunteer when I joined the army, though I wouldn't necessarily recommend that particular endeavor to others. Sometimes I've gone overboard, and volunteered more than I was able to give. But that's another story.

However, I didn't intend in last week's column to suggest that older people teach classes just as volunteers. There is a great deal to be said for paying a fair price for goods and services. For one thing, it requires a realistic appraisal of the value of said goods and services. What you pay for, you value.

Radio commentator Paul Harvey doesn't recite the day's news free of charge. He makes an excellent income from doing his job. He could do it free. He could live on Social Security and his investments. Instead, at 80 years of age, he's going as strong as ever. He's the leading newsman on the air. Some people complain about his politics, but most don't have a clue to his age or his income.

A college which teaches future attorneys in the Bay Area became famous for an incomparable faculty, all on the far side of 65.

Not all older citizens are anxious to work, especially full time, but a few hours a week either teaching or learning might be just right for some. I've known at least one 95 year old who took up the study of Russian for the first time, but she was a very exceptional person.

With some creativity and adjustments, there is no reason Laguna Salada Elementary School District and Jefferson High School District couldn't hire and pay fair honoraria to a whole cadre of seventy and eighty year olds, with or without teaching credentials, to teach subjects on which they have become experts through the years. If the public schools get bogged down in bureaucratic tangles about credentials, etc. perhaps Good Shepherd and Alma Heights might want to lead the way.

To do this well would take the use of good judgment and selectivity. Leave classes about computers to younger people. The young have the edge on those of us who know more about World War II and the Korean Police Action than we do about Apple, Dell, or Microsoft. Most people older than Bill Gates lack the expertise needed to teach about computers.

But when it comes to math, reading, handwriting, journalism, English, all the subdivisions of history, literature, geography, geology, language arts, touch typing, home economics, botany, and two or three dozen other subjects, a lot of expertise inside a lot of senior brains is going unshared. It's not wearing out. It's rusting out from lack of use. Why don't we make a concerted effort to transfer that knowledge into the brains of the next generations? If the current owners of all that knowledge and experience are fairly compensated for it, all the better.

Some recent Reactor columns may be found at Paul Azevedo's website, http://www.thereactor.net/ Reach him by e-mail at Paul@thereactor.net