Pre-retirement education is meant for older workers to remain longer in employment or to adapt to retirement, one of the greatest transitions in the life course: the change, transiting over from the end of the professional phase to post retirement phase of life. At the recent AHA conferences on healthy and active ageing pre-retirement education was one of important topics.
It became clear that mere raising the mandatory retirement age without adopting accompanying supporting measures might well squeeze older people out of the labour market, impoverish them, make them live on social allowance or push them into a long term illness leave. But it might also change the nature of pre-retirement education. Pre-retirement education is mostly education for facing an important change in one’s life, whereas in the above described situation, it might change from education of older workers for facing a change, to education of the long term unemployed older workers or overcoming a long, too long transition which in its own right would become a phase of life. Pre-retirement education has to be ambitious, based on theories and evaluated! It has to be interactive (expert’s lectures are not welcome) since the participants have to get empowered, have to express their hopes and their concerns. It should be a combination of cognitive (head) and emotional learning (heart) and it should also be learning by doing (hands). Topics that can be chosen are endless and their choice depends on the participants!
Source: Alijana Šantej