It’s never too late to learn – if you go
about it in the right way.
If you ever fear that you are already too
old to learn a new skill, remember Priscilla Sitienei, a midwife from Ndalat in
rural Kenya. Having grown up without free primary school education, she had
never learnt to read or write. As she approached her twilight years, however,
she wanted to note down her experiences and knowledge to pass down to the next
generation. And so, she started to attend lessons at the local school – along with six of her great-great-grandchildren. She was 90 at the time.
We are often told that “you can’t teach an
old dog new tricks” – that the grizzled adult brain simply can’t absorb as much
information as an impressionable young child’s. Many people would assume that
you simply couldn’t pick up a complex skill like reading or writing, at the age
of 90, after a lifetime of being illiterate.
The latest studies from psychology and
neuroscience show that these extraordinary achievements need not be the
exception. (Continue reading)
