Is there a need for a fourth statement? An examination of the critical and humanist statements of educational gerontology principles

The guiding principles of the education of older adults have been stated in three landmark publications. In their statements of principles, the authors of those publications affiliated themselves with one of two older-adult learning philosophies: a humanist or a critical one. Thirty years since the first statement, the field of educational gerontology is now weighted with theoretical ambiguities that are sustained by the polarised learning philosophies that govern the three statements of principles. In this paper, by adopting a middle-ground approach, I analyse these statements in order to answer three questions: (1) What do the three statements of educational gerontology principles have in common? (2) How do they conflict? (3) What tensions exist within and across the three statements? I conclude that the current dominant learning philosophies are sometimes hegemonic, exclusive and reductive. I suggest a fourth restatement that matches the contemporary advances in the field of educational gerontology.