Senior Citizens Set Their Own Course in Classroom

The boos and hisses roared as Esther Bryman-McVickar explained to a large group of senior citizens that doctors charge as much as they do to make up for the cost of their educations.

“You gotta be kidding,” challenged one dissenter.

“Oh, no, no, no,” clucked another.

But the 80-year-old retired nurse stood her ground.

“There would have to be twice as many of you to intimidate me. I know whereof I speak,” she retorted in an I-know-better tone only a grandmother of 13 could pull off.

The incident is an example of the raucous debate that fills the community room at Santa Monica Place twice on Mondays and once on Fridays, as groups of about 120 seniors meet to discuss current events. The classes are offered through Santa Monica College’s Emeritus College, a continuing education program for about 3,000 older adults.

In the 20 years since the first current events class opened, it has become the most popular of the college’s 50 courses, far outstripping other classes such as yoga, watercolor painting and horticulture.

In a typical class, instructors present topics, ranging from the Los Angeles County budget deficit to peace in the Middle East, drawing sometimes on newspaper articles or guest speakers. Armed with a microphone, they let the debate fly, roaming up and down the rows of folding chairs soliciting opinions with the flair of a talk-show host.

The senior citizens, many of whom are over 90, are anything but retiring. They argue fervently, on this day, about race issues, denouncing a fellow classmate as a bigot and refusing the politically correct term African American, saying it has too many syllables, in favor of black.

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Though the range of opinions expressed in class defy generalization, most have a liberal bent.

These students draw on a lifetime of experience as parents, university professors, bank vice presidents and probation officers. The five instructors are high school or college teachers and administrators or retired State Department officials. But the students are so well-informed that the instructors decline to call themselves teachers, preferring the title facilitators.

Only one topic is taboo for this group: O.J. Simpson. And for that matter, Hugh Grant, adds Chuck Green, a retired foreign aid official who teaches Friday’s class.

“If we mention the O.J. trial, they get very upset,” Green said. “They are fed up with the whole thing.”

When a speaker accidentally refers to Simpson, the boos are even louder than those uttered against the justification of the rising costs of health care.

“No O.J., no O.J.,” the group yowled until the errant speaker sat down.