Elderhostel Offers Seniors a Challenge

Edith Schenck, a retired first-grade teacher from Edmonds, Wash., is eager to get back to the basics.

This week she has been attending Canto Antiguo Elderhostel on the campus of Thacher Preparatory High School in Ojai with 35 other students 60 and older. They are studying medieval and Renaissance music and history.

“I used music in my classroom all the time when I taught. It’s one of the basics and important for all ages,” Schenck, 69, said. “Retirement is great, but I don’t want to stop growing here. I want to be growing all the time.”

For $280, students stay in the dorms for a week and attend classes 4 1/2 hours a day. They play the recorder and sing music dating to the Middle Ages.

They also attend lectures on the history and culture of the people of the time.

The Elderhostel class is one of thousands offered worldwide. Courses vary from biology to philosophy to computer programming.

“It’s the hottest thing around,” said Shirley Robbins, 62, an instructor for the two-week program. The students are vibrant and their learning capacity is unlimited, she said.

Elderhostel gives many people a purpose after retirement, said Giggs Gallagher, the Elderhostel’s director. “They don’t want to stop challenging themselves just because they retire,” he said.

“There are no prerequisites, no homework, no outside reading, none of the garbage of education, just the substance,” Gallagher said.

It has been an educating experience for Ron Glass, 36, the youngest instructor in the program. “I’ve learned that elderly people are not what we, as a society, expect them to be. We see them as frail, used-up people, but they’re not. They are very vibrant.”

He said his students are much more enthusiastic, aware and curious than younger students.

Elderhostel, a nonprofit organization, was founded in 1975. The program has about 180,000 students in 15,000 areas nationwide and in more than 40 foreign countries.