Publisher's Synopsis
This book successfully links contemporary thinking on older adult learning with social and psychological understandings of later life. - - Professionals, who play an educational role with older people as, for example, clients, customers, students or employees, have often lacked a background understanding of how mature adulthood is experienced and perceived. But what is retirement like today? Is it a deprived status or a privileged one? Who should pay for it and how can it be afforded? What are the alternatives? The editor and contributing authors explore the origins of the social institution that we call 'retirement', its current forms and its future directions. - - The overall aim is to open up the possibilities of all kinds of learning and training in later life. This is because our current and future expectations of retirement will demand a range of new roles, new skills and new ways of living. If society cannot update its view of retirement and of later life, then older people will not be the only losers.
