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Thursday, January 15, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
Seniors prove education can be lifelong project
By BETH A. FISHER
"One's never too old to learn."
That's the proverb that Elspeth Boyd repeats. And proves. At 92, Boyd still is learning as the oldest participant in the KU Elderhater program.
Elderhotel allows senior citizens to go back to school at universities around the world and be college students for a week. They play the role completely — living in residence halls, eating in hall cafeterias and attending classes.
Boyd said, "It's something I look forward to every year and will continue to go as far as possible."
"I't their university. They've been backing us with taxes for years," said Beulah Duncan, program manager of KU Elderhorses, who said saying "Come back we'd love to have you."
Boyd has attended Elderhostel at the University since 1981, the second year of the KU program, and is looking forward to her sixth year.
"It's a fascinating experience," she said. "You never feel old there."
Every Elderhotel program offers three classes each session, two in the morning and one in the afternoon, and social activities in the evening. KU's program is offered in early summer.
Duncan schedules the classes to include one social science course, one fine arts course and a science course. She strives to offer solid academic courses, not craft classes.
"They can get those at the senior center." she said. "Elderhostel classes should be offered on a college level, taught by college professors."
Although the 40 students who attend each session have the option of attending one, two or all three of the courses, 99 percent choose to go to all three. Duncan said.
"By golly, I've never missed one," Boyd said.
Boyd, who graduated from Munich College in England in 1913, said she enjoyed the classes in part because they allowed her to see how far education had come.
"The classes refresh what you learned when you were young." Bovd said.
Duncan, who lives in the residence hall with the students and provides transportation to those who have trouble walking the campus, felt a great commitment to the program.
“It's intellectually stimulating," she said.
"A person's educational background is not important. After they've lived for 60 years, they've learned a lot."
"You don't have to have been in college. It doesn't matter what position you are in life — whether it's high or low. This program fulfills what many people, as they retire, feel that they have missed."
Life on campus
After the participants' first morning of classes, dinner conversation is exciting, Duncan said.
“There’s a lot of sharing of new ideas.” While they are at the University, the
"Every meal is very generous," Boyd said. The cooks plan for those on special diets "and for us ordinary people . . . The people who provide for us are very, very lovely to us."
students sleep and eat at Gertrude Sellards Pearson Hall.
Entertainment is provided every evening. Duncan plans such activities as wine and
chess, a dance party or a barbecue.
Sessions always begin on a Sunday afternoon and end the next Saturday after breakfast. On the first Sunday afternoon, volunteers take students on tours of the campus and help students want to see a particular site or part of campus, especially those who are alumni.
"At least 35 percent of the students are alums." Duncan said.
Later on that first evening, the students gather to meet the week's lecturers and play soon.
"That first night, hardly anyone knows anyone. Boyle said "But when the week's ending is over, I will."
"I know of some people who have been to up 23 Eldershosts."
Duncan said, "They come as strangers and leave as Friends. A large percentage of them remain."
Some people run four or five weeks in a row, traveling on the weekend to take classes the next week at another university that participates in the Elderhotel program.
Students recruit their friends to join the program.
"When I get what I want out of my catalogue, I put on it to one person else to get
them interested," Boyd said. "I just can't say enough for it."
Rapid growth
The Elderhostel program has grown rapidly since it began in 1974. Martin Knowlton, a professor from New England, had taken a walking tour of Europe and was intrigued with the youth hostel program there. He observed students traveling from school to school, meeting students from other regions and learning in various environments.
Knowlton returned home eager to start such a program in the United States. While brainstorming with a friend, David Bianca, he found that a college would be making this type of program for senior citizens.
The first year, four colleges in New England began Elderhostel with 200 students. Now, 12 years later, more than 800 institutions participate in Elderhostel in the United States and in nations such as France, Austra- lia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Mexico and Switzerland.
"I don't know of anyone who has gone to one and not gone again. It's really worth it."
"When I think of it growing like wildfire all over the country, the world, I know it must be good." Boyd said.
Anyone 60 years old or married to someone who is 60 may attend Elderhostel. Catalogues list the courses offered and the participating schools. Many schools offer Elderhostel sessions during the school year, but because of a housing shortage, KU's Elderhostel is in the early summer. That also allows alums who
return to the University for commencement to participate in the program.
KU will offer two sessions this summer. The first session is May 17-23 and the second is May 24-30.
This year, classes will be in the Spencer Museum of Art. The courses offered are "The Golden Age of Ancient Greece" taught by Lou Michel, professor of architecture and urban design; "What Did You Hear Me Say?" taught by Bobby Patton, professor of communications studies; and "Extinction; the Ultimate Disappearing Act" taught by Gary McGrath, a teaching assistant in biology.
The $205-a person fee includes all housing, meals, classes and entertainment. Interested participants must register early for KU's two courses, which are limited to 40 students each.
Duncan said that money toward an Elder-hostel week would make a great present for a grandparent's birthday or for Christmas.
"Many students put their grandparents on the mailing list or pick up a brochure to mail to them," she said.
IRS uses program to hunt tax cheats
Duncan said she remembered a student who came into the Elderhostel hotel, in an annex next to the Continuing Education building, and asked to have his grandfather on the mailing list. The grandfather, a farmer from Iowa, attended the next summer.
United Press International
"He was a delightful person, and he loved the program." Duncan said.
WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service took aim at hard-core tax cheaters Tuesday with a computer that automatically fills out tax returns for people who refuse to file their own.
IRS Assistant Commissioner William Wauben said he expected that the agency would reap about $2 billion in back taxes and penalties from 300,000 people who refused to pay taxes in 1986.
Without the automation, he said,
the government would have neither
the time nor the money to get those
people to pay.
"Even when we attach (take money from) their wages, they give no response," he said. "We're talking here about a hard-core group of folks that have made a decision to get out of the system."
Wauben said the program was directed at about 1 million Americans who regularly refused to pay taxes or even respond to IRS letters and sanctions.
Tax dropouts succeeded because IRS automation only extended so far, he said. For years, the agency used
computers to check an employee's claimed incomes with what their employers said those people actually earned. Such programs helped earn the IRS $2.6 billion in 1985 that it would have lost.
The system worked because 85 percent of the people notified either paid their taxes or otherwise contacted the government. Wauben said.
But others refused to answer letters and calls.
"Their habit of stalling, delaying or ignoring us has caused a lot of problems in the past and at times we must give up on them." Wauben said.
With the new program, however, IRS computers will automatically send notices to the tax cheater. If there is no reply, the computers will prepare the return and send out letters telling the person what he owes.
Failure to respond would give the IRS a green light to take money out of the person's paycheck and seize bank accounts. Wauben said.
"We think that this is going to go a long way for bringing these people back into the system that they have chosen to get out of," Wauben said.
Hayden's day
TOPEKA — newly elected Gov. Mike Hayden receives congratulations after being sworn in. The governor's inauguration took place Monday on
Suzv Mast/KANSAN
2 senators say $1,700 retreat is too costly and extravagant
the south steps of the Capitol building. Hayden's family and friends celebrated in Topeka and Atwood.
Staff writer
A retreat for student senators scheduled for this weekend in Overland Park has been criticized by two student senators as being too costly at a time when the University is facing budget cutbacks.
Bv PAUL BELDEN
The retreat will take place Saturday and Sunday at the DoubleTree Hotel and will cost between $1,700 and $1,800, said Kelly Milligan, student body vice president.
The money for the retreat is from the Student Senate's internal account, which also provides for
"I mean, when you have cutbacks in financial aid, and work-study jobs being pulled out from under jobs, it might look bad for the student senators to take themselves out to a nice hotel in Overland Park for the weekend," he said.
the salaries of the Senate's office staff.
Michael Foubert, graduate student senator, said that although he generally supported retreats and found them useful, this retreat appeared extravagant and for that reason would hurt the Senate.
Milligan said one purpose of the retreat was to help the senators
The retreat will include presentations on Senate regulations, and University and state governing rules, he said. Del Shankel, the acting executive vice chancellor, and David Ambler, vice chancellor for student affairs, are scheduled to speak.
get to know one another before their terms in office started. He also said the retreat could help alleviate what he called bad blood in the Senate left over from November's elections.
Stephanie Quincy, holdover senator from last term, said. "People pretty much sleep through those five-minute presentations on rules and regs anyway."
Better pay and tougher standards needed for teachers, study says
United Press International
SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Toughening the hiring standards for teachers will not worsen a staffing shortage, but may attract more candidates with an improved image of the profession, a Rand Corp. study said Tuesday.
But reforms in the teaching profession also must be accompanied by pay increases and improved working conditions to attract greater numbers of qualified applicants, the 40-page study, "Who Will Teach?" said.
"All by themselves, raising standards isn't a way to alleviate the hardships of working class," said in a telephone interview from his Michigan State University office.
Sedlacek, an associate professor of teacher education who was hired to conduct the study with Rand education specialist Steven Schlossman, said, "It has to be accompanied by other changes in working conditions, including pay increases."
The report also concluded that school districts would have to work even harder to attract more job applicants. The profession for better-paying jobs.
Women have traditionally been attracted to teaching because it was a socially acceptable job for women and allowed time to raise children, the study said. In addition, school districts traditionally hired women because they settled for less pay than men.
The report contradicts warnings by
teachers unions and others that increased certification standards would further reduce the number of candidates, worsening the teacher shortage expected to peak in the 1990s.
Education reform advocates have pushed for tougher requirements for teacher certification, including requiring degree grades
A recent report by the Policy Analysis for California Education, an education think tank, predicts that an increase of students and retirement of an aging teaching force will create a need for 85,000 to 135,000 new teachers in California in the next five years.
Similar predictions have been made for public schools across the
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