POPULARIZING JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
Through Informal Adult Education:
Elderhostels and the Elderhostel Institute Network

Precis of a June 2002 Paper by Patrick Killough
[drafted 10/31/2001]

This paper's complete text sketches the rationale behind an October-November 2002 six week, twelve hour course on Cardinal Newman. The author and his wife will teach Newman to adult learners who are mainly non-Catholic Christians and Jews. The setting is that of an Elderhostel Institute sponsored by a conservative Presbyterian college in Western North Carolina. 

Such informal adult education works when both sponsoring college or university and teachers have a local reputation for presenting materials that students find personally salient. Before they are likely to probe the Cardinal’s life and his many written works, students must first be convinced that Newman can bring them and other seekers closer to God. This course, therefore, had to be at least as much demand side (responding to students’ stated needs) as supply side (life and works of Newman).

***

How enlarge the obvious core of non-academic American readers of Newman beyond Roman Catholics and Episcopalians? Non-specialists informally  reaching out to other non-specialists can begin a process with no inevitable or obvious stopping points. 

Pro Newman associations have their speakers bureaus. Church study groups probe Newman's major writings week after week. Book stores both general and religious carry his works. What more should non-academic admirers of the great man do?

Informal adult education of non-specialists by other non-specialists is one way to broaden and deepen popular interest in Newman. This paper sketches some informal educational channels while detailing the author’s experience with each of them.

--Substantial numbers of individual readers should put onto the internet popularizing book reviews invited by www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com.

--Authors who write non-scholarly columns, articles or books about John Henry Newman should also actively seek interviews on local and regional talk radio and TV
.
--Introductions to Newman’s life and writings should be presented as part of intensive six day Elderhostels or the core of more leisurely Elderhostel Institutes. 

--Worthy of Masterpiece Theater miniseries are the Cardinal's two novels, Loss and Gain and Callista.

This paper describes how the course was thought through in order to appeal to known and likely interests of adult students. It also suggests other forms of popular educational follow on both regionally and nationally.

-OOO-

Patrick Killough (revised 05/30/2002)