109 Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus works. It should be of particular benefit to any Board currently searching for a new President. I recommend it as a practical source for aspiring Presidents and for Board members, despite its disparaging comments about qualitative research methodology. It is discouraging that academics of the stature of Fisher and Koch believe that to promote their own work they must undercut the research of those who support a competing point of view and who use a different research methodology. ^ ^ Ronald J. Manheimer, Denise D. Snodgrass, & Diane MoskowMcKenzie. (1995). Older Adult Education: A Guide to Research Programs, and Policies. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Pp. xviii, 245. Price: $65 US (hardcover). Reviewed by James E. Thornton, Emeriti, Department of Educational Studies, University of British Columbia. Older Adult Education is an important and well documented text about the emergence and organization of older adult education in the United States. However, in preparing this review I was acutely aware that older adult education is under-documented in Canada and that older adult education and adult education general are not sustained by comparable Canadian public or educational policy. These issues must be kept in mind as one reads the book. Older Adult Education summarizes broadly the history and growth of older adult education in the United States. The authors are directors and adult educators at the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement, affiliated with The University of North Carolina at Ashville. The central question shaping the book is "what profile might emerge about the role of education in the lives of older adults today and the huge population bulge of baby boomers soon to follow?" (p. ixv). The profile is about older adults fifty plus engaged in organized learning activities and about the agencies in the community and post-secondary institutions that offer them. The book is organized into six chapters and nine appenCanadianJournalofHigher Education Vol. XXVII -1,1997 110 Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus dices. Bibliographies are at the end of each chapter, suggesting that the chapters were written independently around subsidiary questions suggested by the major "profile" theme. Chapter 1, "Lifelong Learning in an Aging Society," provides the social and philosophical backgrounds of today's older adult education programming that are discussed in greater detail in later chapters. The reconceptualization of the life course, the transformation of later life and older adult roles, and the forces changing the role of education in an aging society are central ideas in the chapter. Chapter 2, "Older Adult Learners and Programs in Historical Perspective," sketches the historical forces that shaped older adult education. Among these are the social and intellectual functioning of the elderly, the field of adult education, and more recently the field of gerontology, particularly educational gerontology. Interestingly, educational gerontology is not specifically noted in this chapter or elsewhere although its literature is. Chapter 3, "The Transformation of Older Learner Programs," discusses data drawn from the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement's 1992-93 national study of five organizational models and program planning approaches that the authors suggest are transforming older adult education. These older adult education programs are mostly self-regulated and self-administered, embracing the concept of empowerment within their institutional setting. The five older adult education programs studies are Elderhostel, Institute for Learning in Retirement [ILR], Senior Centers, Older Adult Service and Information System [OASIS], and Shepherd's Centers. These last two organizations are largely unknown in Canada. Chapter 4, "The Impact of Institutional Policies on Older Adult Education," outlines numerous policy of governmental and nongovernmental agencies that construct and constrict older adult education programming in the United States. The chapter provides an informative analysis of political goals and educational attitudes in the United States and how they affect older adult education programming by controls on funding within and without the education enterprise. In Canada, older adult education and the general field of adult education has never reached Canadian Journal of Higher Education Vol. XXVII -1,1997 111 Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus this level of discourse regarding policy formation or educational entitlements and their influence on funding. This is becoming particularly obvious as governments and the educational establishment search for solutions to an aging workforce and society, funding and delivery being the most problematic. Chapter Five, "Technological Age," and Chapter Six, "Generations Learning Together," are current and comprehensive outlines of these two topics. Both topics touch on social attitudes and educational practices that generally have kept older adult education on the fringe of adult education, as adult education has been marginal to established educational programs. For example, attitudes take this form: older adults are slow to embrace or to learn new technology, and younger and older adults have difficulty learning together. Historically these attitudes are more prevalent in the ethos of program delivery and administration models typically conceived as older adult education than they are in the attitudes of learners, r e g a r d l e s s of their age toward each other or technology. Unfortunately, the attitudes are still entrenched in many community or institutional programs. To mix learners and to introduce new technology requires programming based on well conceived social goals and educational practices. Older learners in the class room do bring a wealth of experience as mentors and younger learners do provide insights to a changing social context for intergenerational living and learning. Educational resources are scarce certainly, but so are the educational innovations necessary to sustain the dramatic demographic and population shifts occurring as communities and workforce age. Nine A p p e n d i c e s guide the reader to additional resources: Leadership Council of Aging Organizations, Organizations Interested in Older Adult Education, Older Adult Education Resources, The Older American Act of 1962 (as amended in 1992), Survey of Age-Based Tuition Waiver Policies (by state); and a background paper for the 1995 White House Conference on Aging, "Life Enrichment Opportunities," among them. The Appendices are invaluable in themselves for the educator, policy analyst and student espousing the cause of older adult education in the United States. They provide some guide posts and markers for those interested in older adult education worldwide, although not necessarily adaptable everywhere. Many programming strategies are Canadian Journal of Higher Education Vol. XXVII -1,1997 112 Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus transferable but the policy mechanisms are not, given the federal and provincial approaches to educational policy. The book is rich with philosophical ideas. The reader is offered extensive tables and charts that develop the authors' purposes, particularly in Chapters 3 and 4. The Index is limited in that it does not provide direct access to major "concepts" or "models" essential to the book, for example "transformation." "elder imperative," and "Institute for Learning In Retirement." Further, the Index might be expanded to help readers locate numerous organizations and people cited in this profile of older adult education in the United States. The placement of references is always problematic, should they be at end of chapters or at the back of the book. The topics would be better served at the end of the chapters. An Authors Index would help readers search for writers of significance to them. Finally, the book needs an epilogue or final chapter the pulls the major threads together into a tapestry of ideas and recommendations, a road map, if you will, for the future of older adult education. The book in its various Chapters and particularly Appendix G, "Life-Enrichment O p p o r t u n i t i e s " o f f e r s m a n y ideas. However, these ideas might be extracted so that policy makers and educators of all stripes clearly hear the voice of older adults about the educational transformations needed in our interdependent communities. In writing this review it was difficult not to sense the absence of Canadian information regarding older adult education that could provide as broad an overview. In Canada we have not documented adequately older adult education to the benefit of older adults or the educational establishment, we have not found advocates for why it is now imperative that we have such information, and we lack leadership from national organizations which might enjoin the discourse. Several years ago two publications appeared: Educational Gerontology: An International Journal, 1992, 18(5), "Special Issue on Educational Gerontology in C a n a d a " and Education in the Third Age: Canadian and Japanese Perspectives (Pacific Education Press, 1992). Both edited collections included articles on older adult education. Articles appear from time to time in Canadian journals, but most articles about older adults learning and education activities are published in non Canadian publications. Canadian Journal ofHigher Education Vol. XXVII -1,1997 113 Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus Furthermore, the task of preparing a Canadian perspective on older adult education is confounded by several factors. Two serve the purpose of this review. Firstly, educational policy making is fragmented; most policy centres have a limited philosophical or policy framework of adult education let alone older adult education. Secondly, no Canadian adult education or gerontology organization has championed the older adult as learner. We have limited information about the Elderhostel and Institutes for Learning in Retirement programs found operating in Canadian postsecondary institutions. The National Advisory Council on Aging has published policy papers on the older learner, but its mandate is health not education. Finally, Canadian programs in higher education have not target the older adult as "learner" in their professional training programs or educational offerings. Tuition-free programming is not an adequate response to sustain older adult education: it doesn't insure either equal or equitable access and it is not a substitute for significant educational policy on older adult education. The Adult Education Program at the University of British Columbia did offer an educational gerontology track in senior adult education, but abandoned it several years ago under the onslaught of retrenchment in higher education. All of this is difficult to understand when demographics clearly suggest that middle-aged and older adults are a potent audience, and as learners are crucial to the social and economic stability of post secondary education. Education is no longer a social benefit limited to youth: lifelong learning is only a buzz word; it is not the education reality across the life course that it might be. Older Adult Education provides one potential road map for educational change. ^ ^ Canadian Journal ofHigher Education Vol. XXVII -1,1997