Double Challenge: Mature and Disabled Students - Rex Lee
Up to the present moment, two successive paradigms governing entry to Higher Education have existed.
The old culturally-imposed paradigm insisted that you should enter and complete your education at the earliest possible date, and woe betide those who for whatever reason missed their educational opportunity. This seems to me to be a utilitarian paradigm. The date of entry into education was to be as early as possible so that the participant could gain the necessary qualifications and thus allow the funding institutions (i.e. family, state or educational institutions) to reap the benefit of his/her education at the earliest possible opportunity. This paradigm applied equally to all educational institutions (at primary, secondary and third levels). A craftsman or craftswoman, for instance, should move as early as possible from the primary sector into the vocational sector and hence qualify, by serving his/her apprenticeship, so that the community could benefit practically from the exercise of his/her useful skills. This is the old paradigm as it operated at its most basic level. In fact, for most of the nineteenth century, in order that the old paradigm work successfully, it was felt unnecessary for labourers to be able to read or write.
The new paradigm, on the other hand, says that we should respond, as far as is possible, to 'felt needs'. You will notice the qualification 'as far as is possible'. In an age of monetarist economics and Thatcherite social policy, it is believed by those charged with funding that access to all levels of education should be governed by the extent to which the funding group (i.e. the tax payer) is prepared to bear this financial burden. Nevertheless, we see the growth of education as a 'felt need' because the second or new paradigm has begun to take hold.
It is necessary to examine what we mean by a 'felt need' in this context. Basically, it is the feeling that we have a need for the fullest possible education. At this level and stated like this, it is merely a 'felt' need. But working in tandem with the second educational paradigm is a further paradigm that says that the fulfilment of needs is a right of all citizens. It is at this level that the second educational paradigm is called into question. Governments consider that it is not safe to expend vast sums of money on the provision of facilities that would enable all citizens to satisfy their felt needs (in this case, for educational fulfilment).
So where does the mature student who is also disabled fit into this world of opposing or successive paradigms? Well, this type of student disturbs the old paradigm in two ways: firstly, quite often he or she may be of an age where it would have been said that the number of years during which he or she could use his/her education to contribute to society in a practical way were limited; secondly, because of the nature of his/her disability, 'special' educational resources might need to be provided in order to enable the student to participate fully in an otherwise inaccessible educational environment.
Apprehensions and Realities
Having made the decision to return to full-time education, one is faced with, if not exactly a third paradigm, at least a cluster of apprehensions. It is assumed, for example, that young people are uniquely fitted to imbibe and retain knowledge, while you, the mature student, on the other hand, are rusty and out of practice as regards some of essential techniques of learning and the retention of knowledge. In facing this apprehension, the first thing the mature student must bear in mind is that experience counts for a lot; the mature student with an average experience of life and the world can easily assimilate the experience into his learning process.
The reality of the experience that the mature student brings into the arena of third-level education, and for which fellow students prize his or her company so much, is important. It unites practical learning with theoretical disciplines. The abstracting of ideas from real life has been a feature of learning and scholarship from early antiquity. Both Plato and Aristotle,1 for instance, drew on examples from the practice of medicine and house-building, and even horse training, in order to make plain the abstract ideas which they taught (Tredennick, 1969; Hamilton, 1971), while in the early eighteenth century, Gibbon used his experience in the West Ken militia in order to explain the military manoeuvres of the Romans (Gibbon, 1979). Another of the apprehensions is that in a world where your fellow students are much younger than you, you will feel isolated and very lonely. Again, this need not be true. As a mature student friend of mine (studying Classics at Trinity) pointed out, the young people seem to gather around you and to take you under their wing; this process, this action of protection, is, moreover, in many ways reciprocal. The younger students help you with the mechanics of learning and knowledge retention, while quite rightly expecting of you that you share with them your experience of the world and of life in general.
In view of the above, most universities and colleges are at present (or certainly should be) only too anxious to accept mature students, because of the beneficial effects which their life experience should have on the general body of undergraduates.
Added to this cluster of apprehensions, the mature student who is also disabled has further apprehensions and fears. In my case it would be, for instance, apprehension about note-taking. I used a tape recorder, but this method of recording lectures requires you to learn a special technique for the recovery of that information when required. Having perfected the technique, however, one is aware that tape recording has its benefits. One of the advantages is that while your recorder does the work, you can listen to and absorb the lecture without having to concentrate on note-taking. In fact, I often felt as if I were listening to a lecture - perhaps on James Joyce's Ulysses or on Wittgenstein - on radio. Tape recording the lectures thus gave me the opportunity to listen to the type of 'programmes' I would have been anxious to find time to hear on the radio.
Roslyn Park College - Preparation for Third-Level Study
I think it is fitting at this stage that I say something about the Pre-University course at Roslyn Park.2 For a mature student who is also disabled, some introduction to the second-level syllabus is essential (although, strictly speaking, you are entitled to enter third-level education without Leaving Certificate qualifications). I, for one, benefited in many ways from the Roslyn Park course. First of all, I graduated with honours in two Leaving Certificate subjects - History and English. Maybe this is education as 'status symbol' (an aspect of educational achievement I will return to below), but Roslyn Park's course certainly also conferred practical benefits. One of these was the practice with examination techniques. My former secondary education was, moreover, so far in the past that I looked upon it as merely acquiring - or 'cramming' - a substantial number of 'facts'. The educational experience turned out to be quite different at Roslyn Park, however, based as it was on the liberal education concept of learning as issue-based rather than fact-based. Such an approach represented appropriate and relevant preparation for the English course which I subsequently undertook at UCD.
One of the most important techniques of learning that I received from Roslyn Park concerned the composition of essays and examination papers. This technique consisted of writing perhaps ten or twenty key points down on paper, and then filling (or 'fleshing') them out, as I called them out to somebody else. Though initially difficult, especially as I was used to writing out everything laboriously in long-hand (often taking whole days and even weeks to compose a few thousand words), this technique took me through my entire university career.
Who is the Mature Student?
It appears to me that mature students fall into several distinct groups. I will mention three such groups.
First of all, there is the group who have postponed their third-level education in order to gain a few years of practical experience. They then re-enter formal education at third level, usually in their twenties. Some of this group are able to continue in employment while pursuing study. Siobhan3, a nurse, for example, realised that if she reduced her hours and worked on night shift only, she could also take a degree. Now Siobhan is taking her Masters degree and instead of working as a nurse is giving tutorials. Eoghan is a post office worker who has been given time and special hours in order to take an undergraduate Arts degree. Aisling, meanwhile, is running her own business while pursuing an Open University Social Science degree.
A second group of mature students are people who have retired. Maire, for instance, was a reporter for over thirty years. Now she is about to embark on a Masters degree.
A third group consists of young and 'middle-aged' married women who have taken to full-time study in order to 'broaden' their world after their years of 'confinement' in the home.
All these groups have helped to break down the old, utilitarian paradigm which says that education must always have a large element of material benefit to the individual concerned and/or the community at large, and that this must be achieved at the least possible expense to the community.
Educating Rita - Educational Fulfilment and Status
The old paradigm was, as suggested above, a utilitarian paradigm. In keeping with the new paradigm, based as it is on the concept of 'felt need', most mature students prize education for its personal-fulfilment aspect. That is not to say that they will not 'make use' of this education, nor that education does not remain, as already mentioned, something of a status symbol for many (young and old alike).
In respect of the self-fulfilling aspect of education, I am always reminded of the film Educating Rita,4 especially the scene in which Rita's tutor tells her that he does not wish to continue with her education because it appears to be spoiling her lively and spontaneous simplicity, at which Rita informs him that this lively simplicity is something she has felt to be a burden rather than something to be prized. What she has in fact wanted most in the world, Rita explains, is to be able not only to understand, but also to contribute to, conversations about 'Art' or 'the Theatre'. I can see what she meant. Her tutor was being patronising, as no doubt he would be patronising to all those he would consider to be insufficient and simple people.
To a certain extent, for those without formal education, the lives and thoughts of others who are lucky enough to have the experience of a full education are as foreign countries. The formally-educated people sound good. What they say appears to make sense, but try as you will you do not feel able to achieve the same clarity of thought. Educated people speak differently than those who have not shared their educational privileges, and what they have to say seems better than what you (the uneducated person) have to say. I am again drawing on my own experience in order to interpret Rita's state of mind. She wants to speak authoritatively about Shakespeare and the Jacobean Dramatists, or the self-referential nature of post-modernist literature. She is suspicious of her tutor when he suggests that she should preserve her simplicity. No doubt the thought crosses her mind - would he be prepared, if he were given the chance, to forego his education and live the life of the simple person (The Noble Savage)?5
To end on a personal note, I must say that I get the utmost satisfaction from seeing my degree certificate hanging on my wall. Although - thanks to a lifetime of reading - I was never very hesitant to express my views on structuralism or the post-modernist paradigm, I now feel that my mind has greater clarity. I do truly believe, like Rita, that education is a luxury - a luxury that is the right of everyone who needs it and wants it.
References
Gibbon, Edward. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, (Bison Books Ltd., London, 1979).
Tredennick, Hugh. The Phaedo (Last Days of Socrates), (Penguin, London, 1969).
Hamilton, Walter. The Gorgias, (Penguin, London, 1)
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Notes
1 Aristotle, being an Empiricist, always used examples from everyday living in order to convey ideas.Click to Return to Text
2 Roslyn Park College, Sandymount, Dublin 4 is a college of the National Training and Development Institute (NTDI). The college offers a Preparation for University and College Course (PUCC) for disabled people wishing to go on to third-level education.Click to Return to Text
3 All names of individual students in this paper are pseudonyms, and any obviously identifying detail has been changed.Click to Return to Text
4 'Educating Rita' is a British film (shot in Dublin and starring Michael Caine and Julie Walters) about a working-class woman returning to education to take a university degree in English.Click to Return to Text
5The term 'the noble savage' refers to the idealisation of 'primitive man' in, for example, Romantic literature.Click to Return to Text
