AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
communication, they insert communication tables into the given
plan.
Although employees prepare all activities with the best
intentions, it can happen that some seniors are not interested in
anything. It may be difficult for employees to respect such
decisions, but they should accept that seniors are in their
partners' positions. Moreover, seniors should primarily decide
what activities they want to participate in and what activities
they want to do in their lives. If we do not respect their real
desires, we put them into the position of "an object of care."
It is probable that, in future, the population of seniors in high age
will increase significantly. The Czech sociologue Možný (2011)
is already drawing attention to changing numbers of people in
age groups above 65 until the year 2050 in the Czech Republic.
"Particularly worrying will be the development in the age group
above 80: today there are about 260 thousand people in this age,
and their number will increase up to 900 thousand to the half of
the century because children from the 70s` baby boom will reach
this age in that time. More than 220 thousand of them will be
older than 90 by keeping the current rate of mortality." (Možný,
2011, p.280). Also, Slovak authors Hroncová, Hudecová,
Matulayová (2000) say that "on one side, longevity is one of the
greatest successes of the 20th century. On the other side, it
seems to be one of the most severe problems as well. Thus,
longevity becomes an immensely significant demographic factor
that determines social politics and a great challenge for human
society." (Hroncová, Hudecová, Matulayová, 2000, p.215).
This situation is also a challenge for social andragogy to prepare
new specialists – social andragogues – geragogues. In the pro-
future context within specialised activities, Határ (2014b)
recommends introducing a social-educational care model for
seniors into the institutional practice. This model focuses on the
needs of individuals, groups and the whole society. It consists of
the following sub-models:
Education of seniors containing specific educational
components that aim at cognitive, socio-affective and
psycho-motor progress of clients` personalities.
Training of clients` social and personal competences.
Social and educational assistance, respectively, socio-
educational counselling for seniors. (shortened, Határ,
2014b).
He also emphasises these aspects: "In addition to the
institutionalisation of senior education, its professionalisation
plays a very significant role, too. Slovak universities provide
pre-graduate preparation for andragogues who should carry out
senior education in residential facilities" (Határ, 2014b, p.29).
He says that "geragogy does not have a statute of an autonomous
study field such as andragogy. It belongs to andragogical
scientific disciplines and, therefore, andragogues perform
geragogical work in various areas in the life of an individual and
society. However, geragogy is a primary teaching subject in
several study programmes for assisting professions (e.g.
pedagogy, social pedagogy, social work and others" (Határ,
2014a, p.30). Considering the statistics mentioned above, we
agree with his opinion and recommendation to introduce the
social andragogues' profession into the residential practice.
Social andragogues could have competences, such as searching,
planning, preparing, carrying out, and assessing seniors' leisure
activities in residential facilities.
In individual planning of objectives, we should not forget to
create offers for lifelong education. Schunová (2016) thinks that
language education belongs to these educational possibilities.
She points to the fact that "age is not such a crucial factor. More
important is what is happening in individuals during the
teaching-learning process. Other essential factors include
conditions for language education, such as a suitable
environment, teacher's personality, motivation, accepting
specific features of participants and their potential." (Schunová,
2017, p.103).
2 Areas of senior education in the 21st century
In a rapidly changing society, it is also essential to adapt
the contents of education more frequently than before. This
approach is also valid for senior education in residential
conditions if we do not want to exclude this group of older adults
entirely from life in civil society. For this reason, in the
following part, we analyse three educational areas that must
form part of retired peoples' education. We based our analysis on
the key competences for the 21st century (
Odporúčania, 2018)).
2.1 Digital skills
Nowadays, digital technologies form an inseparable part of
peoples` lives. Scientific-technological progress allows a fast-
growing number of possibilities that we can use for mutual
communication or personal and professional growth. However,
seniors' absence of digital skills can be a disadvantage that
brings along the feeling of exclusion or being "out-of-date". For
this reason, digital competences represent a great opportunity,
although not fully used now, for seniors' leisure education.
The last European framework for the Digital Competence
DigiComp (2020) which defines expected digital competences of
EU inhabitants, pointed to the fact that, in average, up to 44% of
people do not have adequate digital skills.
We can often see that older people and seniors are afraid of
using technologies, and they use them at the lowest level
possible if their surroundings require it. Thus, Mayerová,
Lenhardtová (2017) talk about the so-called digital exclusion.
They connect it with social exclusion in several areas:
communication problems with enterprises – impossibility
to communicate via chats, e-mails or discussion forums;
limitation or impossibility to use public institutions –
limited use of e-government and e-services (e.g. electronic
voting, online applications)
no access to the public market of services and shops -
impossibility to buy goods and to use services available
online (e.g. internet banking, e-shops, e-libraries)
absence of cultural life, limited access to online culture (
e.g. music, works of art) ( e.g. music, works of art)
(Tomczyk, 2015, in: Mayerová, Lenhardtová, 2017).
Tomczyk (2015) also says that computer illiteracy is an
incoherent phenomenon. For this reason, it is necessary to
characterise the information society, dividing it into three
elementary groups:
e-citizens – they are equipped with a set of competences
necessary for using e-services,
indeed excluded citizens digitally – they do not have the
necessary skills and computer infrastructure which
significantly influences their everyday existence,
only apparently excluded citizens digitally – for this group,
IT technologies are not necessary because their everyday
life is related to the physical access to services and
information (Tomczyk, 2015).
The topic of digital technologies indeed represents a significant
challenge in the context of further education of seniors because
of their participating in social life and keeping relationships with
their families and friends.
In our opinion, education for seniors in residential facilities
represents excellent potential. The presence of a social
andragogue / lecturer and organised leisure time means a
reasonable basis for a PC course or working with a smartphone.
However, there arises a question, what should be the subject of
education, and what is essential to teach seniors so that digital
technologies could increase their socialisation level.
Sikorski (2013) says that the first part of the educational course
should focus on the work with a PC mouse, keyboard, and
reading screen instructions because seniors do not have
- 197 -