Why teach about Aging?
By Fran Pratt

National Academy for Teaching and Learning about Aging

Children learn about aging whether we teach them or not. The issue is not whether they learn but what they learn about the lifelong process of growing up and growing older. If left to happenstance, children learn about aging in the same ways they learn about many things—by absorbing whatever they hear or see, often without being able to distinguish between fact or fiction. Too often, what children learn about aging is based on myths that are deeply entrenched in our culture about the aging process and on stereotypes of older people. These myths and stereotypes are transmitted from one generation to another in our language, humor, literature, and popular media. They perpetuate our society’s knowledge, values, and attitudes about aging.

Not everything children learn about aging is negative. Children, like adults, have complex and changing attitudes about aging. Yet research shows that even at a very early age, children may have already internalized ideas that lead to ageist views (age prejudice) and gerontophobia (fear of aging).

Similarly, not everything young children learn about the aging process is false, research demonstrates that what children know about the aging process of growing up and growing older is a mixture of truth and misinformation. Like any adult from whom they learn, their perspectives on life in the later years (and of their own future as people who will someday grow old) are often dominated by a view of aging as a process of decline, rather that one of growth and fulfillment. A child’s view of what it means to grow old frequently emphasizes physical and mental handicaps, loneliness and isolation, institutionalization, and dependency. A vision of life that is characterized by wellness, involvement with others, and independent living at all ages is missing. In other words, children fully understand the problems that often accompany old age, but not the great potential for happiness and wellness throughout the life span and the opportunity to remain active participants in the mainstream of life.

Children today are expected to live longer than any previous generation. Barring unforeseen circumstances, they are expected to live their lives in a progressively aging society. Since the beginning of the century, average life expectancy at birth has steadily climbed from 47 to 75 years. Thus, children born today should live to their mid-70s, even if no new breakthroughs in medical technology and health care develop.

When today’s elementary school children became tomorrow’s older adults, they will be among those one out of four Americans who have already passed their 60th birthday. This longevity revolution of the 20th century brings vast implications for all aspects of life. Longer life expectancies and changes in the age composition of the population have had, and will continue to have an enormous impact on the family, careers and retirement, education, medicine, business, government and the distribution of public resources. All living Americans, and especially the young, will live out the rest of their lives facing new challenges on the age-related issues. Those challenges will require intelligent decisions based on knowledge and comprehension, not on myth and misinformation.

For all these reasons, children need to learn about aging. Children should begin at the earliest possible age to develop a healthy and realistic view of aging. They should be empowered to maximize their own opportunities for quality of life, and to develop an understanding of the complex issues of living in an aging world. None of us; and least of all young people, can afford to face our individual or collective future(s) guided by ageist myths and stereotypes or by patterns of age discrimination and gerontophobic behavior. Preparation for the future, as a goal of education, should include education about aging as a high priority for all who play a role in education and socializing the young.