This study measured the elderly's subjective feelings and satisfaction with their lives after participating in education, to see the relationship between the elderly's participation in education and the change in their life satisfaction. The study als...
This study measured the elderly's subjective feelings and satisfaction with their lives after participating in education, to see the relationship between the elderly's participation in education and the change in their life satisfaction. The study also proposed to induce better learning participation of the elderly by putting the necessity and practice of elderly education into a gerontology perspective. It also proposes to demand improved education policy for the elderly from a pedagogical perspective and provides an activation plan for the education by seeking the qualitative improvement of the education.
For the study, document inquiries and investigations were carried out. Questionnaires to see how life satisfaction changes according to the participation period and program satisfaction were handed out to the 382 elderly men and women attending three centers providing education program to the elderly, located in Young-Ju city, KyungBuk province. 329 of the questionnaires, effective data, were analyzed with the SPSS 10.0 program.
The results of this study were as follows:
First, all of the participants thought they took part in the program because of the pleasure of learning', which verifies that the old have a high desire for learning. Thus elderly education needs to be compulsory education so that many old people excluded from official educational subjects can approach learning activities in different ways.
Second, the participants revealed a meaningful difference in their lives at home after joining the program, which says the educational participation has effects on their self-satisfaction, sense of life purpose and establishment of self-identity. This result indicates the necessity of an educational program devised to overcome the generation gap.
Third, significant differences in their physical and emotional well-being after participating in meaningful intelligent activity shows that the activity is helpful to health improvement. So more professional education programs are required for the elderly to be able to enjoy a satisfactory life with an understanding of aging, and foreknowledge and preparation for the problems of aging.
Fourth, there were changes in their social and leisure activities after receiving the education, which gave the participants many chances to have friends or hobby activities and meetings. There is a need to have the elderly returning their abilities to society and to make their old age meaningful by having opportunities to be volunteers with the community of generations education program for the community to shorten the generation gap and social integration.
Finally, there was a difference in the level happiness. This is seen as a result of their positive self-concept formation in living actively as learning subjects. Thus, making a good social environment for the elderly by increasing the educational facilities and opportunities is required.