University Of The Aged:a New Living Space For The Aged

With the developing of aging population, the problems of senior citizens have been more and more discussed by society. At present, the social attention for senior citizens not only stays in the material level, but more important is the research of spiritual demand. With the development of the society, there are more and more empty-nest families. Many senior citizens don’t live with their children. After retirement, they have so many spare times that they don’t know how to spend it. As a social activity space, university of the aged appears in senior citizens’daily life. How the University of the Aged produced and developed? What senior citizens do in the University of the Aged? By attending the University of the Ages, what happened to the senior citizens’living space? These are all questions we have to think about and answer.Some sociologists like Emile Durkeim, Georg Simmel, Anthony Giddens, Henry Lefebver and so on have already done researches on space. They expressed their own views on sociology meaning of space. Nowadays, many scholars also have done researches on social space and the living space of senior citizens. Most of their researches only stay in macro social level, or just from architecture perspective, but less on micro school space. Sociology scholars do many researches on schools from pedagogy perspective. As a micro social space, university of the aged appears less on their research perspective. From the perspective of space sociology, this research take the J University of the Aged as an example, choose twenty elderly students to do face-to-face interview. Through reviewing previous researches and practical survey, the author tries to find the answers to the questions we discuss before.The generation of space was not accidental; it is in certain social history background with the actions of interest groups that it produced. As a new living space for senior citizens who retired, university of the aged was set up after the reform and opening up, when the life-long cadre employment system was abolished. Benefit from the government and the elderly, it is developing rapidly. After retirement, the senior citizens have some needs on learning new knowledge to adapt the developing society, learning new skills to enhance their living ability, establishing interpersonal relationships to have new spiritual sustenance. As a large scale aging group, senior citizens are also important strength that influence the social harmony and stability. In response to the needs of the senior citizens and the management of society, the government opens university of the aged actively and gives support of money and policy to it.Senior citizens life in the University of the Aged is rich and colorful, and has its own characteristics. Through face-to-face interview of elderly students and participate in the courses, we can find that elderly students attend classes on time, do homework the teacher assigned seriously and take an active part in all kinds of extracurricular practice activities. They communicate with teachers and other students about study and daily life. Senior citizens who study in the University of the Aged pay more attention on the learning process. They enjoy the space that bring them freedom and relaxed learning and interpersonal environment. Thus we can also find that the University of the Aged brings changes to the people who retired. It makes the senior citizens’daily life space to expand, leisure and entertainment space to expand, spiritual life space to be filled, social relationship space to be rebuild. So the senior citizens can set up a positive and optimistic attitude towards life and have a happy life with gentle state of mind.Through the investigation and analysis we can find that the University of the Aged was established in a certain time, with the functions of both the government and the senior citizens. It has the characteristics of its own. Through the participation of the University of the Aged, the senior citizens obtain a new space of learning, entertainment, interpersonal and so on. It is a free space that can promote the senior citizens’physical, psychological and mental health development. At the same time, the author give some considerations and suggestions on three aspects:establishment of the community university of the aged, social workers into the university of the aged and the university of the ages develops as social public welfare.