Learning What Lies ‘Beyond the Headlines’

The regulars start trickling in 30 minutes or more before class, impatient to launch the day’s discussion on terrorism, secession, Indonesia or the volatile Middle East.

These eager, often-opinionated students, many with white or graying hair, greet longtime acquaintances, pour their coffee and settle in, ready for another session of the weekly world affairs class that some have been attending for nearly 40 years.

“We’re news groupies,” explained Gert Trauring, a longtime student who helps out by checking names off as others arrive. “We can’t get answers to our questions from the people we watch on the news shows. Here, we get our answers.”

The Sept. 11 attacks and other sobering events of the past few years have prompted many Americans to increase their knowledge of national and international affairs. But participants in this class, one of the longest-running for UCLA Extension, needed no such impetus.

The lecture series, known now as “Beyond the Headlines: The World Today,” was launched in 1964. Then as now, its aim was to help participants gain insight into issues and areas of global -- and occasionally local -- tension and to learn their implications.

On a recent Tuesday morning, for example, class members had come to hear a political science professor from Cal State Fullerton, Raphael Sonenshein, lecture on efforts by the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood to secede from Los Angeles.

They listened attentively as Sonenshein, an expert in Southern California politics, led them through the history of the breakaway movements and up to the pending vote.

Then the questions began. Would the secession vote affect public schools, a man in the second row asked. (It won’t, said Sonenshein.) And what about the borough idea, one woman asked? Doesn’t the very term carry its own East Coast baggage, reminding everyone of corrupt big-city politics? (Yes, agreed the professor. “Maybe we could have called them ‘intermediate-level city governments’ or ‘absolutely not New York-style boroughs,’ ” he joked.)

Later, Sonenshein praised the group’s lively interest and informed questions, which he said compared favorably with those of his college students. “It’s such a pleasure to lecture to an audience like this,” the professor said. “It really reminds me of why I do political science.”

Many speakers react similarly, said Max Epstein, dean emeritus of UCLA’s international students and scholars, who has acted as moderator for the class for the last five years.

“A couple have said they just wish their students at UCLA were so lively,” he said. “These are people who read, who travel and who ask challenging questions. It’s a kick for speakers to have that kind of audience.”

The first sessions of the class were held in the tearoom of the Bullocks Wilshire store in Westwood, where young mothers like Trauring gathered with their friends for intellectual “mornings out,” away from their children.

“It was wonderful, a time for us to speak to each other as adults, about adult things,” said Trauring. Many students have stayed with “Beyond the Headlines” through changes in moderator, title and venue, moving along with it from the tearoom to a local synagogue, to a series of private homes, to a church and now, to a UCLA Extension building in the heart of Westwood.

When the course went on hiatus last year while administrators searched for better, less expensive classroom space, many of its loyalists wrote or called UCLA Extension to appeal for its speedy return.

“The same names are on the list year after year,” said Eve Haberfield, who helps oversee the program as a director at UCLA Extension, which offers 4,500 courses a year. “And when we put it on hold, the same loyal people said, ‘No, no, you have to give us our course back.’ ”

This fall they did, housing it in a large, airy classroom big enough to accommodate the 100 students who signed up and a handful of extras who show up regularly for individual sessions, paying $15 at the door. (The full series costs $70 for seniors and college students, $90 for others.)

Most class members are retired, although occasionally there is a smattering of younger people sent by their professors to hear a particularly well-known speaker. At least a handful of participants have taken the class, at least intermittently, since the beginning; many others have attended for a dozen years or more.

Many, like Gertrude Shinbane, 85, take notes, although the course is not for credit and no one is ever tested. “It helps me remember all the interesting things I’m learning,” said Shinbane, a retired Santa Monica bookkeeper who often sits in the front row.

Shinbane, who was among the course’s original students in the mid-1960s, arranges her active volunteer schedule around the class.

“I enjoy talking with all these people interested in something besides cards, bingo or shopping,” she said. “And being as old as most of us are, it’s a great way to keep our minds active and make us better informed.”

Shinbane and others applaud the work of UCLA Extension official Elizabeth Brooks, who often draws academics from UCLA, USC, the Rand Corp. and other institutions as speakers during the eight-week series.

Over the years, many participants say, they have introduced friends and colleagues to the course. Others, like Mike Zweig, 79, make a practice of going from the lectures to meet lunch partners, who often quiz them on what they’ve learned.

“I have to review the class for them every Tuesday,” Zweig complained jokingly of his friends. “They want to know all the details. I really ought to charge them.”

Zweig, who has been attending the class for 12 years, said he missed out on graduate school because he joined the Army Air Forces during World War II. Like many of his classmates, he said, “I never really had enough of going to school.”

For information about UCLA Extension courses, call (310) 825-2272 or check the Web site:

www.uclaextension.org.