Publication details
Vzdělávání dospělých v předseniorském a seniorském věku
| Title in English | Adult education in pre-senior and senior age |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2006 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Sborník prací filozofické fakulty brněnské univerzity. U, Řada pedagogická |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Sociology, demography |
| Keywords | adult education; life long learning; formal education; non-formal education; the elderly |
| Description | The paper deals with formal and non-formal education among senior Czech population aged 50-65. It opens by reviewing the situation of senior Czech people in the labour market and their level of education. It states that as demographic predictions show, this age group will be growing in 2020-2035, representing thus an important pool of labour force. It is a section of population that currently tends to be overlooked. They are people who are hard to employ in the present Czech labour market. This is also the reason why approximately one third of them choose early retirement every year. As a result, the Czech Republic has not met the EU goal to have increased the employment rate among people aged 55-64 to 50% by 2010; the current rate is 43%. This age group also has a relatively unfavourable educational structure, too; the share of people with just basic education or a vocational certificate is too big while the share of people with university degrees is too small. The second part of the paper focuses on participation of elderly Czech population in adult education activities based on a representative survey of adult education in the Czech Republic performed in the spring of 2005. Adult education including senior education is an important feature of knowledge society and naturally also one of the factors aimed at making senior Czech population more active. Data from this survey show that 22% of senior Czech population participated in one course or another concerning their job description, a language course, a course of computer skills, a course in personality development, a course in leisure-time activities or an educational activity concerning civic life. The same share of population plan to attend a course in the next year. It can be said in general that the participation of the senior Czech population depends on the achieved level of education significantly – the more educated the individual, the higher his/her participation. Whether senior Czech people will participate in this kind of education in the near future then depends on whether they have already participated in it (the correlation between past participation and intended participation in the near future is 0.69). The paper then brings a detailed analysis of factors influencing participation in adult education in this age group. The paper concludes that the readiness of senior Czech population to face the need for lifelong learning has not been too good so far. The paper however concludes with an optimistic hypothesis: the senior age group might reflect the cohort effect of the social climate prevalent during the past regime when elderly people were led to believe that old age is but an age of well-deserved retirement when one should harvest the fruits of their previous work activity. This passive approach to ageing is currently being overcome by stressing active old age – there are reasons to expect that the cohort of future seniors who are currently in their forties and mid-forties will be an entirely different generation. |
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