ABSTRACT
It is curious that, with wisdom associated in the popular mind with age, and with the archetypical scholar of cheap novels or science-fiction often an extremely enlightened person, that the relation of education with older age in Britain is so limited. Indeed, another popular image intrudes. Education is the province of the young, not least because, rather more emphatically perhaps over the recent years of unemployment, it has been so intensely linked with the major aspect of preparation. It is a short step from arguing that education is to provide people with the training or re-training for work to claiming that those retired and beyond work need have no call on education. In brief, older people are not expectedfurther, they do not expect themselves-to be concerned with education.
