RESEARCH: SELF-PROMOTION AND CREATIVITY
(Giuseppe Dal Ferro, Translation by Cecilia Furin)
Research has always been linked with didactic activity, since learning is the starting point of man's further analyses and creative elaboration. This is the reason why research is the expression of freedom and capacity of initiative, which characterise man in his originality and his relationship with other men. It is common knowledge that for the individual, the external world and the other people are at the same time an object of learning (reality) and a stimulus for a new creativity (things imagined by the individual) (1).
Nevertheless, research has progressively been expelled from school systems and substituted by a didactic that has become indoctrination (2). It has been relegated to the university or not even to that in the countries where the ideological preoccupation has prevailed. There has emerged the idea of an 'organic intellectual', built up on the scale of society, without space for transgression. No wonder if one thinks that the old Confucian wisdom had theorised the so called "rectification of names", that is the education to the "social role" (3), considering subjectivity a source of conflicts and disorder. Also in Western countries, the predominance of the great interpretative syntheses has reduced the margins of what is subjective (4), reserving innovative research for few highly specialised élites.
In the new cultural season, in which we live, the need for research and creativity as expressions of freedom and democracy has arisen again in an overwhelming way. There has consolidated the idea of a science always to be discovered and of a society that needs everybody's fantasy to answer to daily exigencies (5). This is why, nowadays, in Italian schools, children are introduced from the beginning to free expression and the discovery of knowledge by means of forms of cognitive investigation, rather than by boring expositions. There is a firm belief that professorial communication tends to progressively become sterile because people, who are used to the television message which is persuasive and involving, due to the use of emotive tones, are no longer able to follow theoretical and rational disquisition. Therefore, the need for new expositive methods arises, methods which, if they cannot be either research or stimulus to creativity, are at least simulations of them (active methods).
Our task is to examine the didactic initiatives arisen in the last twenty years for the adults and the elderly and to see whether or not they correspond to this active and creative exigency. The theme "Research: self-promotion creativity and participation" is set within this context. First of all, it is important to consider the existing situation, in order to linger upon the value of research and creativity, and then to conclude problematically with the possible future projects of the Universities of the Third Age.
1. University and research
Prescinding from the above mentioned perspectives, the University in Western countries has usually been linked with research, since there was no point in preparing specialists without offering them methodologies and instruments to become the protagonists of science. Dissertations are an expression of this need.
The Universities of the Third Age have borrowed their name from the ordinary universities, because they were born in France from the opening of the state University to the elderly. Nevertheless, even though their founder Pierre Vellas insisted on the necessity of inserting applied research (6) into them, they entered the easiest way, perhaps the only possible one, that of didactic courses, often addressing a very great number of people. The situation had no better outcomes in Italy, where these institutions were promoted almost entirely by groups of volunteers, with few means at their disposal (7). If in our country the Universities of the Third Age have the merit of being linked to the territory and answering the needs of their users, they undoubtedly suffer from a lack of creativity and stimuli for research. Perhaps, this is why after a few years there is a decrease of students in some places. It should be kept in mind that because of this reason, in the past, popular Universities had entered a crisis. They were organised to offer the information necessary to the updating of the working-class, in order to improve their life conditions.
There are significant experiences in some Universities of the Third Age in the field of creativity. In many Italian institutions for adult and old people there are laboratories of graphic art, painting, ceramics, and also choruses and dramatisation groups. The enthusiasm with which these laboratories are attended and their results are a confirmation of their validity. The exhibitions and displays at the end of the courses organised by the Universities themselves are a proof of the excellent works produced there.
Can we say the same for research? We must admit that the answer is negative, since the very few experiences that have been promoted are either didactic expedients or collaborations to the researches proposed by others. There is little scientific literature proving the possibility of introducing this section in the Universities of the Third Age, even though some recent essays concerning this topic are definitely positive (8). This is why the subject must be discussed in view of subsequent experiences. One may suppose that research, even more than creativity, is consonant with the needs of mature people, who have acquired a practical realism during their lives, which makes creativity a form of innovation rather than a free aesthetic practice.
What do we mean when we speak of research? What sectors can be included in it? The word research is linked with finding something that has been lost or that has not yet been discovered, but which is present in the reality or history in which one lives. Hence the meaning that the term assumes in the field of academic studies of a discovery of historical-cultural findings or of new scientific and technologic acquisitions. Therefore, research takes shape in two great currents: the scientific one in the proper sense of the word, and the historical-cultural one. In the former, that is the scientific-technical current, the researcher observes and discovers certain laws underlying phenomena which allow the reproduction of an observed phenomenon.
In the latter, that is the historic-cultural current, the researcher plunges his knowledge in man and history for an interpretation of individual and collective manifestations and to highlight the underlying lines of civilisation, which are the heritage of humanity. Nevertheless, nowadays research is not an individual matter, given the gigantic proportions of the phenomena, interdependent with each other, which are the object of the investigation. It requires teams of co-ordinated researchers with different roles. There is someone who plans the work, someone who organises it, someone who does the work in the field, someone who gathers the data and finally someone who interprets them. This articulation often requires collaborations among different institutions, even on an international level, in order to reach satisfactory conclusions. It should be noted that, in spite of this collaboration, the results are never considered definitive, due to man's acquired awareness of his limits (9).
In what sector of research is it possible to insert the Universities of the Third age? Before answering this question, we prefer to linger on the relation between the adult/old person and research.
2. Adult/old people and research
We live in an epoch of great cultural homologation, because of the intrusive presence of the mass media, laden with suggestiveness. We think we are participating, and discover that we are instrumentalised. The trouble is that this happens to everybody at the same time, with the consequent annulment of critical confrontation and the isolation of diverging people. Suffering for this situation manifests itself in those who are alienated from the productive flows, from which mass communication draws its inspiration. It is necessary for pedagogical aims to awaken in these people the desire to go beyond things through the awareness of reality, and to become a critical stimulus for the others.
Research takes its place within the framework of liberation and self-promotion and is somehow reunited to creativity. It is common knowledge that the third age, according to some scholars, is the age of complete self-fulfilment in freedom. That is why research in the third age, considered in the above mentioned meaning, becomes essential to free oneself from dependence. A University of the Third Age without research would risk becoming a new form, even though refined, of dependence, a wrong answer to a real need.
In these institutions creativity should be encouraged and stimulated. Erich Fromm wrote: "Being creative means considering the whole process of life as a process of birth and not interpreting each phase of life as a final phase. Many people die without completely being born. Creativity means having completed one's birth before dying. (...) Educating to creativity means educating to life" (10). It is also necessary to develop research, which can bring personal experience to the level of conscience and meaning. If we speak of liberation it is necessary to learn to live everyday reality in a responsible way. We could say that research and creativity must live together and harmonise. In our opinion, for this reason, creativity in the old person takes the shape of innovation (11). The child plays, creates, destroys in a never ending game of fantasy, by means of which he experiences himself. The adult and the old person do not. They have a working life behind them, through which they have learnt to produce and to improve life.
For these people, creativity is linked with a sense of realism, with the improvement of the conditions of life, in a word, with innovation. Everyone knows the lifeless eyes of an old person, who is given everything but the joy of being useful and of being recognised as a subject, and the creative old person who draws new stimuli to improve society from the encouragement and appreciation he received.
In this context Max Weber's thorough investigations about the circular relation between innovative charisma and rationalisation are particular effective, where the innovation is realised in practical models of existence and where reality postulates new innovative proposals in order not to become inhuman (12). In this sense, creativity is not a game of fantasy, but the transformation of reality. We know how the progressive control of nature and the expressive capacity make the person an active subject, who does not surrender and who can interact with the others and with different situations. It is precisely with these stimuli that it receives the secret of its innovative capacity, which is inward before being outward. Each stimulus is the new elaboration of oneself and an invitation to reproject oneself through innovation (13).
Therefore, we can maintain that creativity without research, which anchors a person to reality, becomes a sterile exercise. The adult and the old person are people in which the motivation has a central role, even in the creative activity itself. We can conclude this paragraph by stating that research in adult and old people assumes the form of embodied creativity, as innovation of the quality of life, and therefore education to research is one of the most useful forms of education.
3. Research and social life
We would like to dwell upon another word of the title, that of "participation". We have mentioned before how the feeling of exclusion or uselessness causes frustration, loneliness, and lack of freedom. Everybody knows that man develops by means of social relationships, from which there come stimuli for development and opening up to social life. From a group man receives materials of psychological new elaboration as well as acknowledgements.
Nevertheless a social relationship cannot be a one-way relationship. It requires interaction between two subjects. It is interesting to observe how, in times of great social homologation, many messages are not received if the user is not involved in some way or the other, perhaps in an illusory way such as publicity. Participation places itself on the line of social insertion of people, who must be granted some space and social utility (14).
Research acquires a new meaning, it is not an end in itself, but it has social utility and valorises the person. We may say that the social perspective directs research towards an aim. This dimension can have two perspectives, inside, in the carrying out of the research itself, and outside, in the sharing of the results. In the former case, an individual works in a team with a specific task, and considers his contribution as necessary to attain common goals. Nowadays, in the research activity, the presence of people who somehow maintain the links with real life is more and more necessary. We start doubting about only theoretical researches, without continuous reference to their aims. In the latter case, the research offers its innovative results to daily life and therefore enters a network of relations, interacting with problems and giving some answers to them.
There is no doubt that research, considered not only as a new answer to emerging needs, but also as the transmission of civilisation to make life humane, can become participation to social life. Think about current society without memory and about the contribution that somebody who does a historical-cultural kind of research can give to it, in order to acquire interpretative criteria of reality and of the process of civilisation (15).
4. Research in the Universities of the third age
From the considerations presented above, it is important to introduce research in the Universities of the Third Age. It is known that Medieval Universities were associations of students and professors united in the search for truth. This ancient model seems to be very topical in the formation of people who have behind them a series of experiences to harmonise and to interpret within the framework of a global synthesis where manual ability and speculation, positive sciences and intellectual elaboration, experience of life and meanings shed light on each other.
Research is complementary to didactic activity, if we want to support autonomy (liberation) in the people, critical sense, and social insertion (socialisation). Indeed, these are the expectations emerging from the researches done among the students of the Universities of the Third Age (16).
A preliminary consideration, not taken for granted by scholars, is knowing whether research in old age is possible. Generally, it is typical of young people engaged in proving their capacities with academic career in view, and of adults who are entrusted with particular investigations with the use of the relative economic means. Is it possible to think about retired people devoted to research? What means can they use, since they no longer belong to the Universities or the centres for research?
In the first place, it is interesting to observe how recent studies confirm the presence of new possibilities of creativity even in old age on the one hand, and the elderly's capacity to do research on the other hand. If in old age aggressiveness fails, the capacity of going into depth (17) takes its place. Romano Guardini wrote that for the old person "Each thing is more than what it first seems to be. One may even think that mystery is part of clearness, and that it constitutes the profundity which the existing reality must have to avoid becoming an illusion; one may think that beings are made of mystery: things, events, and the whole event called 'life'" (18). Indeed, peculiar characteristics of an old person are patience, diligence, the search for synthesis, and the capacity of generalising.
We may say that technical-scientific research is undoubtedly possible and is characterised in the elderly by some aspects complementary to the research done in other ages. We do not want to underestimate the differences between a person and another, between somebody who has always been devoted to research and somebody who starts doing it for the first time (19). With regard to this, certain roles within teams of researchers seem more suitable for the old person, in order to complete the research with continuous reference to its social utilisation, through the aforementioned inward participation.
In our opinion, the research in the social-historical field and in the field of human and social sciences is more adapt to the old person. Life, experience, the condition of freedom in which he lives , qualify him for an in-depth reading about what concerns man and social life. On this subject, there are some valuable results of in-depth psychological researches done by old people (20) and even more valuable the engagement of the elderly in the so called "cultural codification" (21). It is common knowledge that civilisation is nearly a 'genetic' transmission of the evolving culture and that it requires people capable of assuming the old values in order to interpret the new phenomena with them, dropping old fashioned forms. Some recent experiences at the University for Adults/Seniors of Vicenza and its ten branches demonstrate how it is possible to involve the students in initiatives of discovery, study, cataloguing, presentation and preservation of the cultural heritage, of the new problems relative to the quality of life (pollution, styles of life, health, etc.). This is a kind of research suitable for adult and old people, and is possible in the Universities of the Third Age and extendible to everyone. I believe that from this research there may be created anthropological museums, meaningful presence of culture in the territory for the promotion of initiatives attentive to the quality of life and stimulating social life rooted in the sense of belonging and, at the same time, in the attention to the respect for human rights and the peoples. We like observing that in this research both in human and social sciences and in the process we have called of "cultural codification", the acting people are the first who benefit from it, because the research becomes a stimulus for a continuous maturation of the person.
In this way, the research itself becomes self-formation, social innovation or embodied creativity, participation. Therefore, it can become essential for a process of formation of adult and old people and can complete an expositive didactic which, if isolated, becomes a new form of dependence.
5. A social answer
Many authors assert that our generation has the possibility of experimenting the so called third age (22) for the first time. Unlike the past, when for the majority of people life finished a few years after the end of working life, nowadays many people have a period of time in which they can freely plan their existence. It is the age of self-fulfilment, denied in the first age, oriented towards future formation, and in the second age, forced to live within the coercive schemes of production and society. Our generation expresses a model of the third age that perhaps future generations will assume as their own.
What third age do we want to express? This is the great question that is asked to the Universities of the Third Age. Do we want a third age wasting its energies in the immediate fulfilment and in the consumption of goods or one that is realised with a specific contribution to everyone's society? If we consider the elderly's suffering for social insignificance, the solution can only be the search for a more important and original social role (23). Besides, the prospect of the progressive ageing of the population and the increasing disproportion between active population and passive one lead people to search for a new pact of solidarity among the generations, in which acquired rights are not claimed, rather specific roles are mutually acknowledged. Therefore, research enters in these wider problems and promotes a new pact of solidarity among the generations (24).
We would like to conclude with a text by Romano Guardini, in which there is indicated the social complementarity of the adults and the elderly. He writes: "There are two kinds of effectiveness: that of the immediate dynamis, that is the force with which one controls and organises (...). When he (man) becomes old, the dynamys weakens (...). He does not become active, rather he radiates. He does not face reality with aggressiveness, he does not keep it under strict control, does not dominate it, rather he makes the sense of things clear" (25).
We think that in the current violent and disrupted society there is the need of the active presence of the elderly, accepted and acknowledged as necessary for the quality of life. Study and research are the instruments to help these people become aware of their social role in order to make society more humane.
NOTES
1. Cf. CASSIRER E., Saggio sull'uomo. Introduzione ad una filosofia della cultura umana, Roma, Armando 19723, p. 99.
2. Cf. DAL FERRO G., "Creatività e vita anziana", in G. DAL FERRO, et al., Creatività nell'anziano, Atti 4° Convegno Federuni Vicenza 13-16 giugno 1985, Vicenza, Rezzara 1986, p. 12.
3. Cf. CORRADINI P., see "Confucianesimo", in La Cina contemporanea, edited by MELIS G.-DEMARCHI F., Roma, Paoline 1979, p. 239.
4. Cf. BERTI E., Le vie della ragione, Bologna, Il Mulino 1987, pp. 17-54.
5. Cf. POPPER K.R., Scienza e filosofia, Torino, Einaudi 1969, p. 149.
6. Cf. VELLAS P., "La ricerca applicata sugli anziani", in Sviluppo culturale nella vita anziana, ed. by G. DAL FERRO, Vicenza, Rezzara 1984, pp. 131-138.
7. Cf. DAL FERRO G., Le Università della terza età. Finalità - organizzazione - risultati, Vicenza, Rezzara 1992, pp. 117-125.
8. Cf. NYIRÖ G.Y., "Intellectual activity in old age", in International Conference of Gerontology, Budapest, Hungarian Academy of Sciences 1975.
9. Cf. POPPER K.R., Scienza e filosofia..., p. 152.
10. FROMM E., "L'atteggiamento creativo", in La creatività e le sue prospettive, ed. by H.H. ANDERSON, Brescia, La Scuola 1972, p. 70.
11. Cf. DAL FERRO G., Creatività e vita anziana..., pp. 13-17.
12. Cf. ivi, pp. 17-21.
13. Cf. MENCARELLI M., Creatività e valori educativi. Saggio di teleologia pedagogica, Brescia, La Scuola 1977, pp. 62-88.
14. Cf. DAL FERRO G., "La partecipazione sociale: condizioni e modelli", in Talis (Third Age Learning International Studies), 5/1995, pp. 9-16.
15. Cf. WEIL S., Riflessioni sulle cause della libertà e dell'oppressione sociale, Milano, Adelphi 1983, pp. 127-130.
16. Cf. DAL FERRO G., Le Università della terza età: chi le frequenta e perché. Tre ricerche sociologiche fra i corsisti nell'Università adulti/anziani del Vicentino negli anni 1994 e 1995, Vicenza, Rezzara 1995, pp. 33-45.
17. Cf. TASSI R., "Introduzione", in F. ANTONINI-S. MAGNOLFI, L'età dei capolavori. Creatività e vecchiaia nelle arti figurative, Venezia, Marsilio 1991. p. X.
18. GUARDINI R., Le età della vita. Loro significato educativo e morale, Milano, Vita e Pensiero 1986, p. 78.
19. Cf. ANTONINI F.-MAGNOLFI S., L'età dei capolavori..., p. 15.
20. Cf. MORETTI VARILE TH., "Implicazione dell'anziano nella ricerca sull'anziano", in Atti del 3° Congresso Atte Lugano 3/5 ottobre 1994, Lugano, 1994, pp. 46-59.
21. Cf. BERRY TH., "Gli anziani: il loro ruolo creativo nella comunità", in Gli anziani oggi "per una terza età attiva e creativa", Atti del Forum Internazionale di Castelgandolfo 31 agosto - 5 settembre 1980, ed. by P. PAVAN, Napoli, Dehoniane 1981, p. 71.
22. Cf. LASLETT P., Una nuova mappa della vita. L'emergere della terza età, Bologna, Il Mulino 1992, pp. 35-38.
23. Cf. DAL FERRO G., Ruolo sociale degli anziani. Ricerca psico-socio-pedagogica sulla vita anziana, Vicenza, Rezzara 1985, p. 75.
24. Cf. HAGMANN H.M., "Le nuove età della vita: per un nuovo contratto di solidarietà tra le generazioni", in Atti 3° Congresso Atte Lugano 3/5 ottobre 1994, Lugano, 1994, pp. 22-27.
25. GUARDINI R., Le età della vita..., p. 64.