Education and learning

Back to the classroom at fifty-two

When Maria Okonkwo turned fifty-two, she signed up for an evening course in geology at her local college. She had loved collecting stones as a child, but her school had not offered the subject, and for the next thirty years work and family always seemed to come first. On the first night she was nervous: most of the group were young enough to be her children. Yet within a few weeks she was [1] rapid progress, and her tutor noticed that she was usually the first to arrive and the last to leave.

That is not to say the course was simple. 'Remembering all the technical terms was by no [2] easy,' Maria says. 'I filled three notebooks with lists.' Her tutor believes that older learners often do well precisely because nobody is forcing them to be there. 'They come because they want to understand something, not because they need a certificate,' she explains. Maria has now enrolled on the second-year course and plans to join a field trip to the coast next spring.