Ageing research seems to fall further behind

It is almost a year since I got very mixed results from my Ph D examiners and this has given me more time to think about the ageing situation. It took six months for the University to decide to offer me another year to resubmit with the help of a new supervisory panel. In that time I was able to detach myself from the academic approach to ageing and look at the (ageing) world around me, giving me a new objectivity.

I am even more convinced than ever that we need to view the years beyond 65 as productive as those before, in terms of achievement, not necessarily financially. The need for financial return often stops our creativity in the pre 65 years although some still manage to find what they really want to do and are able to do it. Post 65 many live in a world where financial and family commitments are no longer our top priority, providing a new freedom.

At the official level thinking seems to be ‘more of the same but at least cost’ to meet the country’s needs in light of the ageing population. The current Federal Minister has appointed a review committee of people in their early 60′s looking at ways for older Australians to be ’economically productive’, which indicates how people who have not yet reached the true ageing years can get it so wrong. I suspect that if the report reaches the media when it is published the cry of ‘work ’til you drop’ will be reworked. After perhaps 50 years in the work force older people don’t want to feel obliged to be economically productive. Encouraging us to use this ever-increasing period of our lives to follow our dreams, whether financially productive or not, should be our choice and we should be enabled and encouraged to do so, regardless of whether such a course bring financial returns or not.

Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows that life expectancy in the last 20 years has increased by 5.6 years for men and 3.9 for women. According to another recent report the number of people aged 85 and over will increase by 350% in the next 40 years. How do we view the fact that this later stage of life is getting increasingly longer and producing an increasing number of older people? Do we picture them sitting drooling in chairs in a nursing home waiting for each year to pass (with many suffering from Alzheimer’s disease), or out in the community contributing to society, enjoying the status such involvement brings? The choice is ours as a community. If we view older people as senile and not worth much then the ageing community will fulfil that expectancy. If instead we see the gifts, talents, knowledge, wisdom and other desirable assets this section of the population has then this will be the role they take on. Older people need to be regarded in a better light and encouraged to utilise what they have to offer, not necessarily in a financial context. This need for recognition of non-financial assets among older people won’t happen until society realises the need to listen to their voices, not allowing younger researchers and workers in the field to dictate the current inaccurate agenda which is what is the situation now.

The current situation is expensive for the community in terms of care provision and personally expensive for individual older people. If an older person can only respond ‘retired’ when asked what they do then this is a way of saying ‘I’m old and not worth much and capable of even less’ which is completely without any community status which everyone needs. Without status we may as well sit drooling in a chair and hope the end comes quickly and painlessly.

Meanwhile I need to try to conform to the rules required of a thesis which I suspect dampens, if not worse, creativity. Given the number of thesis documents submitted each day how many are really contributing to making the world a better place, in any field of study or is the format discouraging the type of study which should be encouraged? Steve Jobs didn’t need academic backing - he just managed to find an environment in which his creativity and imagination flourished. Look how he contributed to the world, not only making it a better place but creating an environment where others could take his ideas to new heights. We need to rethink our world, particularly its creativity, particularly with respect to our ageing population.

Equality in the workplace

One of the depressing things about getting older is that you see governments making the same policy mistakes at roughly twenty year intervals, and other problems which governments seem to assume will go away if they don’t acknowledge them! Policies that fall into the first category are the regularly revised school league tables and the cost to the community of people who are unemployed. The second category includes the problem of mothers in the workforce with its associated paid maternity leave argument.

The mother/worker role conflict is far too important to pretend it will go away or solve itself. It’s at least a couple of decades since we recognised it but have never really tackled it, probably because it is seen as women’s business. Providing full-time child care was seen as the answer but there doesn’t seem to have been many studies on the effects of this. One study (Guensberg 2001) focussed on 1200 children in the US in childcare from birth to kindergarten, although the summary I read did not say whether this was full or partial day care. They found these childcare children less cooperative and tended to fight more. They were also more likely to talk back to teachers and be disruptive. On the positive side they scored better on language tests.

If we add to this picture the false idea that most parents have adopted that ‘more material goods are better and will make us happier’ and are working long hours to achieve this, we are bringing our kids up in a world that is full of material goods but short on the more important issues such as parental care and love and interest associated with this, and which children need for their development. Parents may think that their kids know that they love and care about them but what their kids tell their teachers is often very different. Parents think that working long hours to earn more to shower their kids with more possessions shows their kids that they love them but unfortunately this is not what their kids need. The only way to express love for ones children is the opposite,  to spend time with them and take an interest in them.

Unless we stress how important it is for parents to spend time with their children throughout their lives into adulthood we will create a generation that we are disappointed in and which won’t meet the country’s needs. If children associate work with taking their parents away from them they won’t be impressed with it. Nor will they be inspired to achieve at school if there is nobody really interested in their achievements.

So this brings us back to the situation of the working Mum. Young women today are faced with the dilemma of staying home and bringing their children up as they would like, whilst their male colleagues move up the career ladder, or keeping their careers intact and putting their children in child care, or not having children at all. The increasing age of women having their first child is an attempt to establish their careers before starting their families but this is only a partial solution.

Some fathers are seeking their own solutions by taking time out, either fully or partially, to help bring up their children. Unfortunately they often get mocked for having a ‘mummy’ role. What society should do is the opposite and cold shoulder those fathers who don’t take time out to do their share of the parenting. We should be asking what is wrong with them that they aren’t sharing the most important role they will ever have in their lives, a role which puts their so-called ‘work career’ in the shade. This is the only way we will solve the discrepancy between men and women in the workplace, both in terms of numbers and earnings, and do the right thing by the next generation.

The problem is that if we adopted this approach most of our decision makers would be among those found to be lacking.  We all know of parents who have taken a leading role in society but whose children have gone off the rails. Dad (usually) achieved his success at a huge cost to his child. We need to create a society which regards both parents as equally important.

By elevating parenting to the same status as a career both parents have the opportunity to achieve twice, once as a parent and once in their careers. The current situation means that women can underachieve in the workplace and successfully parent, or the opposite. As a society can we risk missing out on the skills of half the population or of endangering the next generation? Let’s move to a win/win situation for everybody by giving parenting the same status as a career.

Government policy weaknesses

The other evening I attended a meeting on education convened by  two of our federal politicians. I came away very distressed about their views and the fact that it is our very young people who are paying the price of the governments mistakes.

Most of the discussion focussed around the Myschool website, set up by our now Prime Minister when she was Minister of Education. It seems to be based solely on her personal experience of education system which is very biassed. Obviously she is unaware of this. As one who went on to become a lawyer she does not realise that she has the type of intellect for whom the system was set up, and caters for, and the much larger majority who do not fall into this category have to put up with it as best they can. She would have very few friends in this latter much larger group.

The Myschool site lists each school’s results in 5 different academic categories and compares them with those of the rest of the nation and with ‘similar’ schools, and also provides details of the school’s income from all sources including the fees that parents pay. This then provides an income league with all the top private schools heading the list. At the bottom of course are the poorest schools which are then labelled ‘disadvantaged’. The lack of knowledge of Education by the Prime Minister is apparent here. There have been numerous studies showing that if you give the label to groups of students, either class groups or schools, of disadvantaged they will take it on board and achieve correspondingly. They take the idea of being inferior on board and achieve accordingly.

This isn’t just theoretical rhetoric. We discuss education in the sociology course I tutor at University and students from private schools in the past have vaguely felt that they have had a better education than state school students. I have noticed that since the Myschool site was introduced the gap has widened. Private school students are now adamant that they have had a better education and the state school students that they have had an inferior one. When I point out that I have taught in both and there is no difference the private school students get very irate. When I point out that I did relief teaching in one of our top private schools a couple of years ago and walked out in disgust at what I found they don’t want to hear about it. I even point out that past research has shown that students from state schools tend to do better than students from private schools at University but they don’t want to hear about that either. I think the problem is that private school parents pay huge sums of money for their children’s education (enough to provide a very nice deposit on a house or set them up in business instead) and can’t even contemplate that the money may be being spent unwisely, and that they have swallowed hook, line and sinker the private schools sales talk. The fact that it may have disadvantaged their children if they get to University isn’t even contemplated.

The other issue of course is that education is about far more than just the 5 academic abilities measured on the website, even if they were measured accurately which doing a short test every couple of years does not do. Add to the mix valuable school time (often weeks) being taken up coaching the students for the tests and the ‘fiddled’ results obtained by discouraging low achievers from attending school on the day of the test and the whole test scenario disappears into farce. Yet not only have we subjected our whole school system to this stupidity but we are creating a two tiered society, the education haves and have-nots, which again is a very regressive move.

What really upsets me is that I have been involved in education for so long that I have seen so many of these fads come and go, leaving a damaged community behind. One of the suggestions one of the MP’s made at the meeting was that we need to attract more brighter people to careers in education. This would help to provide a more intelligent education system.  The trouble is that those we do attract take one look at the job and move on, which means that the people who get to the top, and should be advising the Minister, are not the brightest people. Our highly intelligent teachers realise that having to prepare students for publically published test results, a league table based on flawed results, is a ridiculous idea and they move on to fields where their talents can be fully utilised. Unfortunately this is a self-perpetuating system. Given the fact that Australia has to not only survive but also succeed in a highly competitive world we can’t afford to be distracted by Minister’s whims.

The ageing research scene

I am currently reading a book on ‘Productive Aging’ (it is an American book, hence the spelling) recommended by one of my examiners. It was published in 2001, a decade ago, but it is still apparently a recommended text. Once again I find myself concerned that it is written by younger people with apparently no input from older people themselves, which seems to give it an air of  inaccuracy.

Whilst reading it I found myself daydreaming about a year I spent on a country estate with my family at about the age of 8. The house we lived in previously had a field at the bottom of the garden so the change really wasn’t the huge change it could have been if we had moved from the city. I loved the life, particularly as our house, and those of the other people working on the estate, were adjacent to the farm which supported the  estate community. I enjoyed the farm life and got involved as much as I could. One of my favourite jobs was helping to round-up the cows for milking. Another was in the school holidays when all the children went out with the workers who were hay making. On the way home the four children were hoisted up to ride on the back of a beautiful Clydesdale horse. These horses were huge and immensely powerful but incredibly gentle with their precious cargo of children.

Reading about the need for ’Productive Aging’  seemed to have parallels with steering  the herd of cows towards the milking shed each day. The whole concept of ’Productive Ageing’ seems to be to steer older people like a herd towards doing something profitable. There is much discussion about the meaning of  ’productive’, whether it should be restricted to paid work or work which has a financial value if it had to be done by a paid worker, such as the carer role. Intellectual pursuits would not be included in this definition. This suggested role for older people has a parallel with the cows who are not considered  to have any thoughts, ideas and desires.

The book was written before brain plasticity was widely accepted which may be an explanation, but is not an excuse, for treating older people as ‘them’, with no input into what is written about them, including the type of lifestyles being advocated for them. This is part of the current environment in which older people are treated as second class citizens in which their lifestyles can be dictated for them. Society used to take the same approach to people of a different colour and women (bedroom and kitchen roles) before we discovered that those tagged with these labels are actually people. These groups also have the different talents, abilities, interests etc that the rest of society has. Those advocating ‘Productive Aging’ seem to be insisting on a life of  ’more of the same’ and recommending that this be facilitated by society. They argue that people should stay at work, presumably in the same jobs as they did before, completely ignoring those who hate their work and can’t wait to retire to get out of it. I suspect that in Australia most of those who enjoy their work try to avoid the retirement option.

What I am advocating is that we regard the later stage of life as an opportunity to either continue to follow the pursuits we already had in our working lives if we wish, or if we are not enjoying these (which many people do not seem to do) then use this as an opportunity to follow unfulfilled ambitions or discover new ones. If we look at all the new inventions, ideas and other changes, particularly in the field of health, that have taken place in the last fifty years we need to remember then it is the current group of older people who achieved this. We shouldn’t just be put out to pasture or herded into the milking sheds to produce what society designates us to do. Mankind found itself firstly in an agricultural age, then an industrial age and then the current information age for which today’s ageing are largely responsible. Where is society heading next and who will be responsible for its direction? For the first time in history we have a large number of ‘elders’ whose knowledge and experience should be used to help direct the future of society, rather than just stumbling into it as we have done in the past.

Older people have so much to offer, in terms of knowledge and experience; if we can couple this with  brain plasticity which now recognises that our brains can still learn new ideas, and reapply old ones, throughout life, then the later years should be seen as a time of opportunity, and new ideas, not of being propelled towards the milking sheds with our udders rolling from side to side!

Different views of the same document

Just before Christmas I received copies of the examiners’ reports on my thesis. I am not able to know the names of the examiners until the whole degree process is over but I assume that all three were chosen for their expertise in ageing.

I find it difficult to accept that three people with what should be parallel backgrounds can have such different views. One gave positive ticks in all the boxes, one gave all negative ticks and the third is all over the place. This was particularly intriguing in terms of whether each examiner regarded my research as new knowledge or not. One said it was, the other two said it was not although the one who was all over the place seemed to think that if I did some more study it would be! Considering that I am supporting my arguments using the fairly recently accepted brain plasticity research, which to my knowledge no-one else in the field of later stage of life research has applied in this area, I find it difficult to accept that it is not new work. In addition, if it is not new work and other people are already following this line I would assume I would be aware of it through the very many conferences I attend, both in Australia and overseas.

I know that there is some unease about increasing the number of undergraduates exponentially as we seem to be doing, without lowering standards. This concern then extends to higher degrees, particularly with doctorates. At my first conference for researcher students in ageing five years ago I was concerned that so many students, many of them in the field of physiotherapy, were researching very trivial issues. In their case the incentive was that they could then call themselves ‘Doctor’ when setting up their physiotherapy clinics and people would assume that they were medical doctors.

This mass production of higher education needs to be monitored to make sure that ‘easy’ topics don’t replace genuine research in much-needed areas. If we look at the world today we do not seem to be producing research in the right fields nor  are we applying it as we should. Any newspaper any day is likely to portray at least parts of  the world in a state of chaos, either nature produced or man-made, and we seem to have no solution for either. The collapse of the banking sector led some people to realise that our so-called democracies are actually controlled by dictatorship banks. Queensland, which has been suffering for years from drought is now inundated with water which has to be left to flow distructively away. Will this be replaced by another drought which again we don’t know the cause of, nor can we prevent it.

Meanwhile I am left to grapple with an academic problem nearer home. If one examiner objects to part of my thesis and the other two don’t is it a problem? How do I address such differing responses? The one who failed me makes comments that have already been refuted in the text, suggesting that he read it in a hurry. The one who ticked all the boxes is very keen for me to publish several parts of my research which I intend to do but not initially in the academic press which is what I think he has in mind. Ageing, and the effects of it, are an everyday problem for an increasing number of older people. This is where most research should be taking us, to practical use in the community. A few years ago a researcher in Sydney did research on solar panels but could get no financial support here. He found a very different story in China which seems to be well ahead of other economies in its use of natural energy and welcomed him with open arms.

Research should be largely based on the natural, and man-made, problems around us, recognised as such and assessed as such. Then we will have a better world, including for the homeless and starving. Then our scholarship and research will have its rightful place in society.

We don’t seem to use the new knowledge we discover

I think many of us expected a great new world to accompany the 21st century, particularly compared with the huge changes last century. We are already a decade into it and we seem to be ignoring so much of our new knowledge. Maybe as an older person I am more conscious of  changes, and the lack of changes which should be happening as a result of new knowledge.

For many of us the revelations in Wikileaks is showing us a very different side of our world leaders – a side we prefer didn’t exist. People we put our trust in are expected to have personal standards that we can endorse but this no longer seems to be the case. Worse still, I’m not convinced that their behaviour will improve. The only thing that may change is that they may be a bit more careful about what they commit to paper. Otherwise they will continue with the same unacceptable behaviour. What interests me is that Obama hasn’t been implicated in any of it, at least according to the Australia media, yet his popularity is low. Does that mean that we now expect our leaders to behave unconscionably and accept them if they do? Does this imply that society is not moving forward with each new generation having higher standards than the last? I always wince at the thought of people flooding to see public hangings in the past and hope that as a society we are moving upwards in our standards.

One area in which we ignore progress is the idea that we will get much better results in projects if we involve the users of the project right from the start. I am aware that this doesn’t happen with older people because society’s pecking order designates us as second class citizens, without knowledge or views, but the behaviour stretches beyond this. I recently attended a meeting about the new Super Clinic the Federal government is providing seeding money for in Canberra. The senior government officer leading the discussion was surprised at how many members of the community had views on the project. If you don’t involve the community, in a project designed for the community, right from the start then you will get less successful outcomes. I asked if the selection criteria for the group to set it up would include their ability to meet major health problems, such as the epidemics in obesity and diabetes. I was told they wouldn’t be. So they are not going to provide for the needs of  the community, nor are they going to address major health needs. Shouldn’t this be ringing alarm bells for a government frequently accused of badly managing projects? It’s wonderful fodder for the opposition, but I suspect they prefer to bring our attention to it when it is too late.

We learned so much in the last century yet we ignore so much of it. I wonder if, now that the characters of our leaders are being exposed, if we will continue to be apathetic. Don’t we want a better society, one we can be proud of? No doubt the many millions across the world who are starving and homeless already know the answer to this.

Computer scams

The other evening I got a phone call from someone purporting to be from ‘Windows’. He told me that I had a virus on my computer. I assume that this was supposed to be a shock tactic to get me to behave irrationally. I told him I knew about the virus. He tried to get me to open my computer but I told him that this wasn’t convenient. He then tried shock tactic number 2 and told me that my computer could crash at any moment and would I open it up. Again I told him I knew. Eventually he asked if he could ring me back when it was convenient for me to open the computer but I said I would ring him. Surprise, surprise, he wasn’t allowed to give me his phone number and after he told me he would ask his supervisor the phone went dead.

I rang the police and was advised to contact Scam Watch which I did and left an account of what had happened. I assume I was not the only one being targeted and I would like to think that this Federal Police department would alert other people. Apparently if I had done as he had said his organisation would have taken over my computer.

Modern technology can make a huge difference to our lives but this is an example of how it is also a mixed blessing. Older people in particular grew up in a world where we were likely to know, or know the family of, people we were dealing with. In that sense it was a much safer world.

I suspect it will take us a while to be less trusting of people, particularly people who pretend to be helping us. It’s sad that we have to change in this way. It’s sad also that we have to teach young people that the world is a much more dangerous place than the one we grew up in. Does all this have to be the outcome of a new world in which we can be connected with so many more people? Why can’t the traditional values of loving and caring for others in western societies take precedence in society? The churches used to preach about hell and damnation which we no longer accept but do we have to lose all sense of being accountable for our behaviour?

Maybe this is another case of the need for older people’s voices to be heard, and joined by the voices of younger people who also believe that caring for, and about, others is the only way ahead for us to create a just and fair society, and a prosperous one in terms of human values.

Academics making their living from the ageing scenario

Last week I attended the annual conference of the Australian Association of Gerontologists in Hobart. It is now 5 years since I attended one of their conferences and little has changed. Unfortunately ageing study is a growing field and tends to attract mainly less than first class academics, which results in poor quality research. At the first conference I was horrified by the lack of participation by older people. It was like having a conference on women’s issues without women. It would have been acceptable the century before last but not in the 21st century. Unfortunately in ageing research the lack of participation of this group is just accepted.

At a conference 6 months after my original encounter with this organisation I presented a paper on involving older people. I was rudely rubbished by the president-elect at the time and her supporters applauded her comments. Little has changed. Even those who do involve older people in their research (never throughout the project) use such small numbers that their work has little application beyond their project. One of the main speakers at the conference commented on involving older people (marginally) as though it was a new idea.

For real participation, and high quality research, older people should be involved in formulating the research question, writing the research tool (such as a questionnaire), analysing the results and writing up the report. Where older people are not trained for this such training should be provided. Not only would it produce better research results but it would prevent researchers making fools of themselves through comments which show a lack of understanding of the issues involved with ageing.

I attended the conference dinner, which I usually avoid, as I did 5 years ago. Again little had changed. The so-called ‘music’ was too loud for conversation so we were left to watch somewhat inebriated academics doing what they called ‘dancing’, which seemed to involve waving various bits of their bodies around. The person from South Korea I was sitting next to managed to say, in a moment of quiet, that they would be ashamed of their behaviour next day, until I pointed out that the alcohol was flowing so freely they wouldn’t remember. I would have loved to have talked with those with international experience around me but it was far too noisy.

This is the life of those involved in research into ageing. Frankly I believe that older people deserve better than this. If the ageing population is a problem then it is mainly because our voices are not being heard and those researching these problems are not setting high enough standards for themselves. It is sad that their’s are the voices being listened to, and getting the grant money, while the elderly can’t afford to attend such conferences and be heard.

Book writing as opposed to thesis writing

I have always felt that having my research sitting in a thesis on a dusty shelf was a bit of a waste and I have always been determined to publish it as a populist book. I have now even abandoned the thought of publishing articles in appropriate journals they usually have limited circulation and the audience is almost 100% younger people who wouldn’t appreciate the relevance of it.

Currently my thesis is with three examiners, hopefully with intimate knowledge of older people, and not obtained from what other younger researchers have written. There are too many holes in this type of research, all theory and no practice.

Meanwhile I am having a fruitful time putting my research into a book which is aimed at older people themselves, and also pre-aging people. It is so different writing in a more personal style, in which there is no word limit and no longer does each word have to be formal and necessary. What makes it easier is that I am not writing about ‘them’ but about ‘us’ as an older person myself. By continuing my career until the age of 73 I know what is possible because I am doing it myself.

I am continuing to read the latest books about brain plasticity and how increasingly important this is to older people. The old ‘use it or lose it’ saying has now been amended to ‘use it as much as possible’. With an anticipated 1.13 million Australians predicted to have Alzheimer’s disease by 2050 a scary picture is presented. One author pointed out that we have got ourselves into an unacceptable predicament and we need to work towards extending brain health to that of life expectancy. I still feel that research into Alzheimer’s disease focusses on finding a cure, not prevention. This is cynically tied in with the fact that the organisations doing the research are all medical people who can’t look outside the square, nor does their careers support a non-medical prevention approach.

We are in the midst of an election in Australia. It really saddens me that neither party has announced a policy on our Aboriginal people, in spite of world condemnation of our treatment of them. Presumably the politicians don’t feel that their votes are worth chasing.

Since the voice of older people is only heard through the young people employed by the major senior organisations, the situation as regards this section of the population is much easier, although the policies are often irrelevant as far as genuine older people are concerned.

I hope I can find an international publisher for my book as I think its relevance stretches beyond Australia.

Biased research

I recently flew down to Melbourne to attend the 14th Kenneth Myer lecture sponsored by the Florey Neuroscience Institutes. This lecture is given by a different world leader in different aspects of brain research and is always of the highest standard. This year it was on memory and how our brains create and store memory, and was given by renowned British Neurophysiologist Professor Tim Bliss who is not only a brilliant researcher but is also able to use language which a layman can understand.

The Institutes always aim for high standards but I found myself concerned by a project they are running on brain fitness. The programme is excellent but the cost to participate is $485 for a team of 5. This automatically rules out large sections of the population, including those who don’t work in institutions where such a team can be formed (and hopefully paid for by the employer) and, in particular elderly people. There are so many myths around about the brains of this latter section of the population that I question the accuracy of research which excludes them. I suspect that this group is a particularly fruitful area of research in so many ways, not least of which is that we are becoming a large and therefore important section of the population. 

My flight back took me to the beginning part of the life cycle. The gentleman behind me paid extra for his early school year children to watch TV during the 45 minute trip. It was a short flight in a relatively small plane so that the ground below was visible for almost all of the trip. Below us was the rich tapestry of geography that is part of the eastern seaboard of our country. Seeing it at our feet would have provided a much richer lesson in so many ways than any school can provide. Instead of looking at it and understanding the country way of life, and how the early pioneers developed the land, these poor kids were glued to cartoons on the TV. Part of the blame for this parental attitude must lie with our schools who give the impression that only they educate our children.