This paper discusses Jan Amos Komeński’s concept of “The School of Old Age” showing its topicality and usefulness in contemporary analyses into the educational problems of old people. The author refers to twenty century educational reports and contemporary concepts of human education linking it to Mr Komeński’s idea formulated over 300 years ago. “The School of Old Age” was presented as time ans place to be to learn but also the time we are now to learn. According to the author, “The School of Old Age” is to be perceived as a chance for all of us, both old people and children, youth, middle‑age and approaching old age people to get to know ourselves, understand, engage into dialogue and create our own identity.

It is worthwhile coming to the ancient legacy. Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote a dialogue about the old age in 44 B.C. in a difficult moment of his life. This way he wanted to repel an attack of depression. In his philosophy the fear of the old age doesn’t have
grounds. The autumn of one’s life has numerous merits. An elderly man can draw on the rich experience, he can devote to studies without obstacles, free life from anxienty, and in the end through the gate of death he can enter the kongdom of great ancestors and lost relatives. However Cyceron’s thought is an attempt to enchant reality. Thomas de Quincey in The Last Days of Immanuel Kant showed that the power of the philosophical mind was losing with the ruthless biological regres. Only the awareness of defeat and the threat of suffering makes the space for the true courage of the old age. Drowning anxiety out — even with the best intention of rescuing human vitality — is picking the chance up for hearing important questions and at the same time for reaching maturity.

The article focuses on different representation of old age in European classical painting. The author describes old age using pictorial art as a source of historical and cultural information. Applying qualitative methods, the researcher analyzed similar conception of ageing, consequently identifying several groups of images. The first is old age treated as an opposition to youth, but also as a dialogue between these two stages of life. The second approach shows old people as dignified and noble, like in Leon Wyczółkowski’s Self- Portrait in Yellow Jerkin. Another recurrent representation of elderly people emphasize their maturity and experience. Finally, ageing is frequently associated with ugliness and destruction. Subsequently, the author analyzes the differences and similarities between the representations of women and men. Usually women do not appear as distinctive as men, sitting immovable in their black dresses, unoccupied and inactive. Old men are more often depicted as king or even God, or as vigorous and dynamic characters. In the summary, the author distinguishes two perspective. One, centred on the human body and beauty, depreciates old age as time of degeneration, suffering and agony. The second view, however, focusing on values such as knowledge, maturity and experience, acknowledges and appreciates the positive face of old age.

Man evolves throughout his entire life and this process is accompanied by education. Lifelong education is seen as duty and social compulsion. Andrzej Kamiński indicated on the role of education in preparation for ageing. He thought that due to obtained knowledge, skills and experience one can have better senility. Preparation for senility can take place in different period of life, in many different ways :publication, lectures, different courses, media and also own activity. Ageing education is not only a way of getting new qualifications but it also amplifies ourselves to make life in senility a source of satisfaction and gladness.

This article presents a part of research carried out from December 2005 to March 2006, that refers to an attitude to the old age and a phenomenon of preparation for this period. The main goal of this study was to demonstrate how people between 40 and 60 years
old conceive of the old age and importance of self‑realization and education in this context. Choice of questioned in the middle age bracket was caused by the fact that this stage of human life seems to be a crucial period for preparation for old age. In this phase people realize a fact that the youth with its easiness and multitude of time goes away and the old age comes around with perspective of human existence’s end. This is a period of adaptation, revaluations and acceptance of thought about own old age putting man in front of specific problems, new challenges and evolutionary tasks. The way of dealing with it affects entire further life.
Conclusions from the research show that there are many heterogeneous ways of seeing the old age dependig on age, sex and schooling, but it seems to dominate positive vision of this period. Self‑realization, but not education in institutions, becomes an important part of today’s and future life for questioned. However, it is a lot of varied preferred ways of own evolution.

The aim of presented considerations is to show the potential of social capital which exists in the older persons’ generation. The author introduces the areas of seniors’ intellectual activity and emphasizes that society should let older people create their own
life space in dimension of cognitive, cultural and social activity. The author introduces the practical solutions of idea of permanent education in gerontology perspective and characterizes the institutions of formal and informal education taking social programmes
for old age re‑integration into consideration.

The text constitutes a synthetic presentation of models, tasks and functions of the university of the third age. The subsequent parts show its origins and changes, forms and methods of work, as well as conclusions from the research. In conclusion, the arguments in favour of the support of the development of the universities of the third age in Poland and all over the world are given.

The paper presents a general characteristics of aged people, their needs and opportunities of development. One of the needs is the necessity of mental stimulation, which can be satisfied through participation in activities offered by Third Age University. Huge growth of the number of aged people in developed countries including Poland contributes to the development of Third Age Universities not only as one of the forms of continuous education but also as a community of elderly people. The number of Third Age Universities in Poland, though not exactly known, is estimated at about 130 and is still growing. One of such institutions is the Third Age University attached to the University of Silesia. It started in the academic year 1982/83 and the current number of students is about 1800, including separate groups in Katowice, Sosnowiec and Jastrzębie with over 1100, 500 and 300 people, respectively. The students can choose from a wide offer of activities ranging from lectures, classes and seminars to trips and activities involving
physical movement. In October 2007 the Third Age University attached to the University of Silesia was an organizer of an all‑Poland
conference “To study to be”.

Life these days provokes in an adult person a necessity of incessant learning. To an adult specificity, the most corresponding is an informal education, natural, or a nonformal one. However, it does not mean that an adult citizen cannot participate in a formal
system, on the contrary, there is a wide access to such systems nowadays. Senior citizens, who are usually no longer professionally active, are nowadays in a similar life situation. Everyday challenges provoke them to learn continuously. The problem of senior citizens’ education can be also analyzed from a different perspective, in which elderly people become informal teachers for the others. The question is whether, nowadays, a senior citizen can still play such a role? Moreover, is it possible that removing elderly people from the role they have had so far in the cross‑generation communication, and putting them in the margin, with a simultaneous stimulation to create only the intra‑generational ties, causes the risk of generating the “old age subculture”? The answers to the above and other questions are given in this paper, which is enriched by empirical illustration obtained on the basis of the research carried out by the author.

In the article the autumn of one’s life of the woman was portrayed in the light of educational aspects, presented from two different perspectives: the educational autumn and the autumn education. The first perspective is portraying the old age as the time of discovering new possibilities and the developmental potential by women in different areas everyday lives, with the second prospect presented educational value included in memories of women stayed in the third age. In the article were portrayed educational
inspirations connected with the topic.

The article rises the quality of life in the free time of the Upper silesia female seniors in respect to theirs biographies and contemporary civilization changes. The author analyses and judges from of activities they attend taking into consideration the last gerontology acientific achievements and prospects of the seniors lifes. The scientist also suggest free time activities for those of analysed who does not take advantage of psychophysical opportunities.

Senior marginalization (pushing/going into the margin of attention, presence, importance) is the result of the conflict against the background of dissimilarities (e.g. needs, viewpoints, actions) of different age groups. The necessity to struggle is experienced
by the very groups only in case of the realization of contradictory events. Earlier — in the phase of conflict revelation — there exists a possibility of a non‑antagonist solution of the situation. Readiness and ability to relieve the pressure in a compromise way may
constitute a resultative goal of educational influences. The tasks ahead of the conflict „sides” learning/taught a compromise, actions of those teaching ones and conditions of their influences are outlined in the main part of the paper, which, in the light of the cognitive teaching theory, is to show a potential of education in opposition to marginalization (in the case of a senior at the level of his/her helplessness towards it).

The article presents dangers of the social exclusion of the old. It defines a scale and effects of the phenomenon in both Poland and Europe on a base of present and forecast demographic data. Notions of the exclusion and social cohesion, and potential spheres
of discrimination possibility and marginalization of the old are discussed. What is emphasized is the growing importance of the integration and social cohesion which are the rudiments of promotion of human capital and the prevention of exclusion. To elaborate of coordinated activity aimed at counteracting the phenomenon, the guidelines of Human Capital Operating Program contained in National Cohesion Strategy 2007—2013 are analysed.

In developed societies we observe progressively longer life span. Alongside with this phenomenon the question of the quality of such a prolonged life becomes an issue. The aim of this article is to indicate the needs of the elderly and the challenges which such needs place before education. Thus the article discusses S. Timmermann’s typology of educational activities based on H. McClusky’s concept of needs. Further on also proposals of evaluating the quality of life of the elderly are presented, based on biographical research.

The author focuses her deliberations around the problem of growing old with respect to both an individual and Polish society as a whole. She ponders over the specificity of old age in the individual and social dimensions. In the individual dimension, she depicts the differences between men and women related to life expectancy. She also differentiates between positive and pathological old age trying to find the reasons for both. In response to the above, she calls for the necessary upbringing and preparation for old
age not only in the case of current elders but also in the case of elders‑to‑be. This necessity is justified on the grounds of low life quality in the third age as well as a distinctly low status of old age noticeable in the culture and society. The author believes that education is the right method of social revalidation in the case of both an aging society and an aging individual as well as the right tool serving to bring up and prepare people to be old. Education, as she puts it, addressed to current elders and elders‑to‑be,
but also education about old age, which is supposed to help people become familiar with and understand the unique situation and needs of third‑age persons.

Nowadays a view is accepted, that pedagogy doesn’t relate its subject to children and to young people only. It is expressed as making efforts to develop an andragogy, so called “pedagogy of adults”. Unfortunately there is no common concrete activity
for development of geragogy, called as a “pedagogy of old people” or “pedagogy of an old age”. Some people claim that there is no such a need to develop this branch of knowledge because issues of old people are a subject of andragogy. But such a position isn’t fully proved, if we take into account a fact that the old age is a special phase of man’s life, fulfilled with difficult situations: e.g. loss of work, death of life’s partner, decrease of physical or psychological efficiency and it requires adapting to the new psychophysical and cultural circumstances etc. So, the question is: what is the main subject of geragogy? What are its main assumptions? In what way geragogy can be realized in practice? These questions describe the content of this article in which the author’s original views on geragogy has been presented.

The article refers to gerantologic education in the area of academic education for students of different specialisations, great number of social services workers and specialisation teams. This copy presents social factors of gerantologic education, exactly describes,
not only gerantologic growing old of societies but also such processes like: social marginalisation, discriminations regarding the age. It refers to the practical dimension of gerantologic education to indicate basic directions, in the end.

In the article there were discussed the demographic problems of aging, types of aging and modifying factors. It was referred to the lifestyle, environmental and culture factors also to the geriatrics, which are important for beneficial agening.