O lder learners are slower to learn but retain their learning more effectively.
That was what I was told in my ITTM (Instructional Techniques & Training Methods) course when I was promoted to Regional Staff Trainer for the Department of Employment (now the Department of Work & Pensions) way back in the 1980s.
And on the whole, I found that to be true, although it didn’t take into account the impatience and sometimes derision of younger learners who were being forced to learn at a slower pace due to the inclusion of older learners in the group.
Now I find myself in the position of being one of those older learners, and I am definitely finding it harder than ever to take in the learning. Mercifully, as I’m on my own there are no younger learners to take the mickey out of me or add to my already crippling lack of self-confidence.
Lifelong learning
I have been an avid supporter of lifelong learning for as long as I can remember.
When I was in paid employment, I constantly changed job roles, either because I got promoted or because the organisations I worked for were subject to political whim and therefore in a state of near-constant flux. Each new position required fresh learning, and it was a challenge I relished.
When Jack and I stepped off the corporate ladder to relocate to a banana plantation in the north of Tenerife, we decided to begin new careers in travel writing. That required a whole new set of skills – pitching, writing, wordcounts, deadlines – all of which had to be mastered without the aid of training courses.
To supplement the small and irregular income travel writing initially brought in, we decided to publish our own guide to Tenerife with a little book of driving routes called, Island Drives. Now we were into a whole new set of tough challenges – desktop publishing, layout, formats, printing, distribution.
Our heads spun from one newly learned skill to the next. Website building, search engine optimisation, and social media followed swiftly on the heels of publishing, pushing our learning curves to nosebleed-inducing inclines.
But we succeeded, and we thrived, and we acquired more skills in that first decade than we had in 25 years in an industry famed for its continuous training and development of staff. But there’s no doubt, the older I got, the harder it became to learn new skills.
New challenges for older learners
T his century has seen the world of work moving at a faster rate than ever before. Workers are now expected to acquire technical skills such as data analytics, automation, advanced IT, programming skills, and of course, AI.
They also have to learn to find their way around the gig economy which means they’re frequently remote working where there are no team members on hand to share learning and experiences.
For young entrants to the workforce all that will be exciting and achievable but for older learners it presents greater challenges than my generation faced. And even though I’m not part of that mad world of work anymore, as a self-employed writer I still have to learn to use new technology if I’m to stand a chance at succeeding.
Which is why I’m now having to get to grips with Substack. And it’s not easy. But as I’m on the brink of taking back control of The Banana Road, as well as coming close to being ready to submit my first novel to agents, or to self-publish, I now find it’s essential.
I have also chosen at this time, for reasons that elude even me, to try to self-learn touch typing. Although I’m extremely adept at the two-finger method of typing, being able to type whilst looking at the screen rather than the keyboard would improve my speed and accuracy significantly.
I’m using typing.com to do my learning and on Monday, I threw a tantrum at my own incompetence. I childishly hammered the keys in a deliberate attempt to score zero. How pathetic is that? Being an older learner isn’t just frustrating for anyone who has to share a class or training session with them, it’s infuriating for the older learners themselves.
As someone who has never struggled with learning before, I’m experiencing a level of frustration I’ve never encountered. I want to scream, throw my laptop in the fire, and amputate my left hand which appears to be considerably more stupid than my right. But if I manage to stop myself from doing the latter two of those, I will persist and I will succeed.
That’s another thing about some older learners, they’re infuriatingly stubborn.
