This study aims to investigate the narratives of some “mature” students who are challenging the widely-shared view that studying, and learning new things, is a prerogative of young people. Twenty-five narrative interviews were conducted with older people enrolled at the University of Padua, Italy, to shed light on the motives, values, self-image, and personal solutions that supported their decision to resume and successfully pursue a path of studies at a “non-canonical” age. Starting from perspectives that emphasize the social dimension of meaning-making activity, we explore the counter-narratives functional to the deconstruction of “age prejudice”. The results that emerge from a thematic and structural narrative analysis show some common themes and three different counter-narratives through which respondents try to challenge the idea that they are too old to study. The paper ends with some considerations on the degree of efficacy with which these counter-narratives can resist age prejudice, identifying cases in which they favor change on a personal, social, or cultural level.

本研究旨在调查一些“成熟”学生的叙述，这些学生正在挑战广泛认同的观点，即学习和学习新事物是年轻人的特权。对就读于意大利帕多瓦大学的老年人进行了 25 次叙述性访谈，以阐明支持他们决定继续并成功地追求学习道路的动机、价值观、自我形象和个人解决方案。 “非规范”年龄。我们从强调意义创造活动的社会维度的角度出发，探索对“年龄偏见”的解构起作用的反叙事。主题和结构叙事分析的结果显示了一些共同的主题和三种不同的反叙事，受访者试图通过这些反叙事来挑战他们太老而无法学习的想法。本文最后对这些反叙事抵抗年龄偏见的有效性程度进行了一些考虑，确定了它们在个人、社会或文化层面上支持变革的案例。