`The intelligent man loves to learn,” goes the old Russian proverb, and the idiot loves to teach.
We’re near the end of a class one recent early morning in a large room of the International House at 1414 E. 59th St. on the University of Chicago campus.
A stage director in his 30s named Curt Columbus–in shorts, sandals and T-shirt–is lecturing on Chekhov’s play “Uncle Vanya.” He has just quoted the proverb, in Russian and English, to a class of 16 senior citizens enrolled in one of the many programs offered by the Boston-based Elderhostel organization.
It cannot escape him that a couple of times during their 90 minutes together the bright folk facing him have sent a cherished notion to flight. Once, striving for a helpful analogy, he asked if anyone in the class could attest to his premise that the 19th Century Russian peasant’s love of land is a lot like that of the U.S. Midwesterner even today, especially the rural Midwesterner.
“Uh-uh, nope, not at all,” answered Mary Garst of Coon Rapids, Iowa. “I’m a cattle breeder and a farmer, and I can tell you it’s just not so. Land just means wealth. It isn’t `love of land,’ it’s love of money.”
There are murmurs of agreement.
“Interesting, that’s interesting,” said Columbus. “Well, it could be my premise is wrong. Maybe I’ve been overly romantic about those Russians, too.”
His students clearly impress him. “You know,” he says outside during a break, “young people, even the ones in my performance classes, think Chekhov is stuffy, stodgy, old. These people don’t. They get into the real human issues. And they don’t have the ego-involvement of young students. They just want to learn for learning’s sake. And I wind up learning from them.”
On this particular week Mary and her Rockford relations, Edward and Nancy Garst, are taking the Chekhov class, another headed “India Emerging: Can Ancient Institutions Survive the Modern World?” and a third, quite popular, called “Chicago Architectural Feast.”
Elderhostel gives seniors numerous avenues of study and recreation. Once available only on a handful of New England college campuses, they have spread to every state and Canadian province as well as 45 other countries. About 1,800 institutions participate as hosts.
Four are in Chicago–the International House, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Art Institute and the Chicago Historical Society.
“All you need,” says the catalog, “is an inquiring mind. You’ll find yourself in class with all kinds of people, from those who never finished high school to those with a number of impressive degrees. A common interest in the subject is what brings you together.”
Going and growing
Marty Knowlton, the University of New Hampshire activist-educator who conceived the non-profit Elderhostel phenomenon 20 years ago, did not necessarily claim or believe that a stretched, “inquiring” mind arrests age and prolongs life.
But he must be onto something. About 220 signed up in 1975. Today the number is near 250,000, and growing. Most seem to be repeaters, some chalking up as many as 16 or 20 Elderhostel visits.
It’s really a vacation-study system for anyone at least 55 (until recently the age minimum was 60). And a companion can join if he or she is at least 50.
In the U.S. version, you decide from the Elderhostel catalog where you want to spend five days, Monday through Friday, taking three (usually) diverse courses, with field trips and other extracurricular activities.
You pay between $300 to $400, which covers meals, described as “wholesome and nutritious institutional fare,” and a “modest” lodging that may be a shared or, sometimes costing more, unshared situation. Often the bathroom is down the hall.
The International House’s enrollees are housed there, but for those participating in an undormed institution program, like the Art Institute’s, a mid-priced hotel is used. You pay a few hundred dollars more, in most cases, for similar stays in Alaska or Hawaii, The most popular state is Arizona, followed by California and Georgia.
The foreign pilgrimages last two to three weeks, but in some cases even longer, with costs ranging from $1,710 (Costa Rica) to $4,580 (Australia and New Zealand).
Many of those at International House confessed to being Elderhostel junkies.
Hinsdale’s Margaret Shaughnessy, a 1st-grade teacher for 32 years, has had nine study-vacations.
San Franciscan Jane P. May, who has been both an opera singer and a U.S. Committee for UNICEF administrator, has journeyed to programs in Mexico and in England, Scotland and Wales.
Dietitian Marjorie Livenman’s flight out of Oklahoma City to Cuernavaca a few months back was marred only by the sight of a blaze, initially “pretty,” through the plane window; it turned out to be the Murrah Federal building explosion.
Dinner with the ambassador
Edward and Nancy Garst have taken a half dozen Elderhostel trips, including ones to Greece and Uruguay. Says Ed, a former president of the Rockford Spring Co.: `Who visits Uruguay? Nobody. Americans don’t go there. So when we wrote of our interest they wrote right back and asked in what way they could help us. It was wonderful in Uruguay. The American ambassador was so anxious to be with other Americans he had us over for dinner. Then his secretary had us over for dinner.”
Why do they take these trips?
“One, because old people are living longer than ever before,” says Ed. “Two, we have all this time we’d otherwise not know what to do with. Three, because we have all this money we don’t know what to do with.”
Both Ed and Nancy were University of Chicago students.
“You’ll find we get a lot of people who go to the Elderhostel program here because the U of C is where they went to school,” says William Hinchliff, who teaches the architecture class as well as, on other weeks, a class in Chicago’s literary history.
“They like to roam around the campus like they once did. They’re interesting people–and they’re interested. There’s no homework, they aren’t graded, and they’re not going for a degree.
“I like taking them on field trips because I have this great prop out there”–he gestures to the window–” Chicago. I take them on field trips to buildings around the town, and when I do the literature class I can take them to Dreiser’s Chicago, then Algren’s Chicago, Wright’s Chicago, Cather’s Chicago. I always get a kick out of it, and out of them.”
“Of course,” says Mary Ann Riley, a Des Moines book critic and past columnist for the Iowa Daily Press, “some people ignore the classes and just go to all these places for the cheap lodging.
“Is that really true?” asks a lady nearby.
“Well, I’ve heard stories . . . “
The instructors, garnered by Elderhostel personnel at whatever institution the pilgrims attend, are promised to be first-rate.
Ambitious schedule
One sweltering summer week, Hinchliff taught his class every night at 7 p.m. On one particular date his aged pupils had already sat through the Chekhov and India classes, then walked through the Oriental Institute’s ancient Middle East exhibits and the 1909 Frank Lloyd Wright wonder, the Robie House, both buildings on 58th Street.
Armed with a slide projector, Hinchliff nonetheless mesmerized them with a non-stop flurry of enthusiasm on the subject of modernism and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and of the Mies legacy and its postmodernist challengers. “And tomorrow we’ll go see these buildings!” he concludes, soon to be surrounded by elders wanting to talk more architecture.
Ralph W. Nicholas, who teaches the class on India, is a University of Chicago anthropologist and president of International House. This day he has smoothly taken the group through the fascinating complexities of East and West Pakistan’s partition from India–and their estrangement from each other–as it reflects tensions on the sub-continent between secularists and religionists, and between Hindus and Muslims.
Do these academic experiences stay with the students?
“Oh, heavens, no,” says Mary Garst at lunch in the International House cafeteria. “Well, at least not with me. Next week I won’t have two thoughts about India. Oh, sorry.”
Professor Nicholas, sitting at the same table, nods that that’s okay.
“But, you know,” she continues, “in some way these things do stick in the brain. I know I must be getting something out of it.”
“Their minds are more segmented than the 18-year-old undergraduate’s,” says Nicholas at the table a little later. “But I find they run far deeper.”
Elderhostel has every reason to think its enthusiasts’ numbers will grow indefinitely. But Mary Ann Riley, who rather likes to play devil’s advocate, declares: “I don’t think it will last. Not after we’re gone, and with the next generations coming up. They don’t seem serious enough.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” says Nancy Garst. “Just give them enough time. They’ll wise up.”
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Elderhostel prints four catalogs a year, and if you can’t find one in your local public library you can write to Elderhostel, 75 Federal St., Boston, Mass. 02110. But it can take four to six weeks for it to arrive, so if you are in a hurry Elderhostel recommends you phone: 617-426-8056.
