Active Ageing Through Lifelong Learning: The University of the Third Age

Abstract

The World Health Organization defined ‘active ageing’ as the process of optimising opportunities for health, participation and security in order to enhance the quality of life as people age. Whilst initially active ageing was hinged upon the three pillars of health, participation and security, in more recent years lifelong learning was posited as an emergent fourth pillar. Lifelong learning in later life refers to the process in which older adults, individually and in association with others, engage in direct encounter and then purposefully reflect upon, validate, transform, give personal meaning to and seek to integrate their ways of knowing. Universities of the Third Age (U3As) can be loosely defined as sociocultural centres where senior citizens may acquire new knowledge of significant issues, or validate the knowledge which they already possess, in an agreeable milieu and in accordance with easy and acceptable methods, with the objective of preserving their vitality and participating in the life of the community. The U3A movement has not only withstood the test of time but is also marked by an extensive increase of centres and members all over the continents, as their activities have been found to be instrumental to improving physical, emotional and social well-being in later life. This chapter ends by highlighting lacunae in the global U3A movement as centres tend to operate in a way to attract older women, healthy older persons and older persons with higher-than-average levels of socio-economic status.