Before we support or oppose any of the views on whether or not age is a barrier to learning, I want us to critically consider and purposefully examine the meaning of the three nouns that make up the sentence: age, barrier, and learning.
The first of the words is Age. Age has to do with period, time, maturing, growing old, or growing old. As a man, we must not forget that growing old or maturing comes with many responsibilities.
Now let us consider the barrier. Barrier is synonymous with fence, blockade, obstruction, obstacle, hurdle and difficulty. Note that out of all these synonyms, there is not one of the words that can permanently stop a given mind. With determination, they are seen by the winners as challenges and not as the end of the road. I belong to the category of people who see those words as challenges but not as a final ending. In fact, the only ultimate end I recognized is death. And any body that stops tilting, whether dead or alive, is death as far as I’m concerned.
Learning, on the other hand, means education or acquisition of knowledge. If you agree with me that learning is synonymous with education and can sometimes be used interchangeably without penalties, learning could also be categorized into three types such as education: formal education (formal learning), non-formal education (non-formal learning), and informal education. (informal learning).
Now that these words have been considered and clearly elucidated, one can now comfortably have an opinion as to whether or not age is a barrier to education, however, I will be indifferent to supporting or hastily opposing it because, as a pragmatist, I believe in saying the stuff. how they are, but not how they look. Given a formal learning system that is an organized form of learning within the four walls of an institution, age could be a barrier. For example, he is an extremely determined person who can enroll in a formal education system at the age of forty. A forty-year-old is already burdened with many responsibilities that could be a barrier to relying on a formal system at that age. At this age, some of the barriers could be marriage, children, finances, and work.
According to Age Concern Northern Ireland’s policy position paper, older people should have equal opportunities to continue their education, develop new skills and talents. That means there are some opportunities that older people are supposed to be exposed to or share with young people, but are denied because of their age. Having said this, it is not enough to admit that age is a barrier to learning, because formal learning is only one aspect of learning.
From the formal, non-formal and informal understandings of learning, learning can be seen as a part of life, a fact that occurs from the cradle to the grave. It means that one starts learning as soon as possible until death.
Considering that learning is from cradle to death, we have to take some illustration to prove the point. A child learns to cry, to drink water and even to breastfeed from the day he is born. The child continues to learn in this way until the age of formal learning when the child will be registered in a formal school system.
Age is not a barrier to learning because some people who have dropped out of school for one reason or another often register for public exams like the General Certificate of Education (GCE) even in their forties and still go back to school for continue their studies. If age is a barrier to learning, those who dropped out of school before 1970 in Nigeria would not have known how to use computers, because computers were not taught in Nigerian schools before 1970.
Also, some people learn and pick up a skill or two even in their late fifties. It could be a game or any other pleasurable skill.
Furthermore, Professor Pat Utomi said in one of his media interviews with AIT that a teacher who did not attend two seminars a year is not qualified to stand and lecture in any classroom because what it will give students students will be obsolete. , obsolete and poisonous to the nation. According to him, every speaker, whether he is a teacher or not, must be sponsored to attend two or more seminars each year, either by the government or by his employer. This connotes that even as a teacher who might have been forty or older, he is still mandated to learn by the law of dynamism.
Who? Whether infant or adult, young or old who hasn’t learned a thing or two today. A man dies from the moment he stops to learn. In the office we learn, in religious houses we learn, in the market places we learn, and even at home we learn. Traveling and tourism is also part of learning. How can age be a barrier to learning when learning never stops until the man dies?
In conclusion, you can agree with me after looking at the points about age and learning clarified so far that regardless of age trying to be a barrier to the formal learning system, it is not enough to say that age is a barrier. barrier to learning. The only thing that is permanent in life is change, and it is only learning that sustained change in that state.
