Lifelong Learning

Nobody asked but …

Yesterday I started a new term at OLLI at UK.  My first class is a meta-class about how to build an OLLI course.  Btw, OLLI stands for Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.  My preliminary idea is to do a discussion group centering on classical liberalism, but my mentor believes that using that term in my title would present difficulties with the curriculum committee, who want to maintain a veil of political neutrality, and may run off some potential participants.  We discussed how classical liberalism as a philosophy has nothing to do with today’s liberal politics, but we still have the problem of creating false first impressions.  Now I’m toying with the idea of calling the course “Facing today’s social-economic-political-cultural landscape by revisiting pre-FDR philosophies,” and as I read it that sounds really awkward.  What might you recommend?  And while you are at it, tell me whether such a course (about 8 two-hour meetings of a discussion group covering thinkers like Jefferson, Paine, Thoreau, Bastiat, Twain, Mencken, Locke, Voltaire, and Hume) would be of interest to you.  I may propose an online version for EVC.

Kilgore