IT’S a typical afternoon at South West TAFE and energy drinks and art folios are spread out on tables around the library.
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Plenty of white earphones are plugged into heads and fingertips click on keyboards.
The only voices come from beyond some bookshelves at the back of the room, where a group of seniors are gathered around a table talking about history, redefining what it is to learn and teach.
Lorraine Sharrock is more than four times the age of most students at TAFE.
Turning 90 next month, the Warrnambool great-grandmother is leading a class of more mature students, aged 60 and upward, as part of an international network that gets older citizens into lecture theatres.
The University of the Third Age might have a name that sounds like a cult, but it has given education to a generation who missed out on academia because of the cost or just never had the chance.
For Mrs Sharrock it was both.
She was unable to afford school and she was also raising six children alone.
“It was only for the wealthy,” she said.
“I couldn’t have gone.
“When Gough Whitlam brought in free education that was the only reason I could go to university, otherwise I couldn’t have done it.”
From the age of 60, she completed two degrees and is now a tutor for the group, which covers everything from conflict in the Middle East to the history of cotton.
Name the subject and the chances are Mrs Sharrock has research notes on it somewhere.
“Anything we learn now connects us up with the news,” she said yesterday.
The tutor scoffs at the idea of staying at home, quietly playing cards.
“When you get to my age people think yeah, that’s an oldie,” Mrs Sharrock said.
“Now that we’re getting up in age people say that we should be sitting back — that’s rubbish.
“I’ve got to offer people something.”
The praise is easy coming from her students.
“She’s very caring and we love her dearly,” student Phillipa Caulfield said.
“There’s no homework.’’
The group meets several times a week for classes as well as lectures at Deakin University.
Her students have already decided to take the day off class next month to celebrate Mrs Sharrock’s 90th birthday.
Watching her own family grow by generations has been one of the greatest pleasures in life, but has presented a unique problem, Mrs Sharrock said.
“I’ve got over 60 birthdays this year — I’ll be getting cheap cards,” she said.
