Many retirees, not trying to earn degrees, participate in programs like the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes, which are affiliated mostly with colleges and universities. Source: Older Students Learn for the Sake of Learning – The New York Times In my thirties, working at SACHED, the anti-apartheid education NGO in South Africa, ‘life-long learning’ was (for
I hate to admit it, but this story in the FT pretty much sums things up… With a characteristic mix of defiance and mirth, Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s president, has chuckled his way through some testing times this year. He allowed himself a smile in February as armed police manhandled opposition MPs out of parliament
It is two weeks, give or take a few hours, since I landed in Joburg. The first week in South Africa was All about Alex: introducing Alex Usher, President of the firm I work for in Toronto, to a range of higher ed actors and experts in Cape Town, Pretoria and Johannesburg, and linking him
Out of sheer shame – there can be no other explanation for this – the temperatures here in Toronto have climbed, sneakily, up into the low single digits: just as I prepare to board a plane for sunny South Africa. Do you think this is a coincidence? Nah, I don’t think so! It’s shame, I
I’ve been waiting for the snow to fall, before resuming this blog – I mean, why would you want to announce to the world that you are back in Toronto, after a whole month away in sunny South Africa (wildlife, braaivleis, red wine, and temperatures in the thirties) unless you can say you have come
A quick post from Pearson, Toronto, en route to Johannesburg, via Amsterdam. Rob flies out on Monday to join me, connecting through Munich. A week’s work in Pretoria, with my UK colleague on the EU-SA Skills Dialogue project – Professor Mike Campbell. Already I have learned a lot from Mike, and I expect to learn
Credit where credit is due. Despite the somewhat sensitive nature of the meetings up in North Bay on Friday, and despite the somewhat inauspicious circumstances (senior-level layoffs, specifically) the reasonableness and professionalism of the two faculty committees, meeting for five hours at the end of term to evaluate the work of their own friends and
Am heading up to North Bay this morning, about four hours’ – you guessed it – north of here. I checked the weather of course – light snow falling, clearing later. Around minus 9, all day. Then I looked out our kitchen window, for a sort of home-grown weather report – and there was our
Well, it’s minus nine degrees Centigrade today, here in Toronto; minus 18, with the wind chill. I guess you could say that winter has arrived. Yesterday’s soggy snow has mostly dissolved; what’s left has frozen. And there will likely be more snow, later today, and another five centimetres has been promised for tomorrow. This is
The last hours of the Thanksgiving weekend. Curled up with books, in the lamplight; Rob in the chair in the corner, me on the new green sofa. Outside it is cool, and damp; the temperature has tested two degrees, overnight, the days have hovered around 12 or 13. You can sense the world turning through
