As the educational and economic conditions of the elders have improved,
some educated elders begin to demand a new form of education. They want
their education to be more intellectually challenging and more academic
oriented. In this situation, Korean elderly education should be more developed
and diversified to meet different needs of Korean elders.
Learning in Retirement(LIR) has been developed since the 1970s in the
United States for the purpose of providing American elders with an
opportunity to pursue their intellectual growth. LIR is now the most popular
and fastest growing form of elderly education in the U. S. The reason for it
is that LIR is different from other forms of elderly education. In LIR, elders
participate in all the processes of their education as the subjects. They plan,
manage, evaluate, and even finance their education and by doing all these,
they can empower themselves.
In the study, the author attempts to do research on LIR in depth and to
find out the possibility of LIR as a new model for Korean elderly education.
In specific, first, the author investigates the backgrounds of the development
of LIR in the United States Second, the author looks into the definition, main
characteristics, and limitations of LIR. Third, the author examines to what
extent LIR can meet the new educational demand of Korean elders, and what
conditions should be improved to initiate LIR in Korea, and what direction the
future Korean LIR should take.