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Yesterday I attended a conference on Aged Care Policy at Australia’s top university, The Australian National University, with many of its senior staff members attending plus a couple of overseas expert visitors. I was so disappointed with the standard. Three of the speakers didn’t use power point which, given that approximately 75% of the population learn visually, meant that many of the audience were disadvantaged. Even some of those who did use it misused it. The golden rule is to only have up to 7 lines of text on any slide- many presenters put as much as they can on a slide and keep on talking. I prefer to either listen or read- I find it difficult to do both at once. When graphs are used audiences should be given time to absorb anything other than a very simple graph and the speaker needs to explain what the graph is showing. I sometimes think that with some speakers the purpose of a slide is an attempt to impress the audience, not to actually tell them anything. At one point yesterday the convener of the session kept asking questions about a particular slide- obviously he was having problems with it too. Given his academic history the fault was obviously with the speaker. None of these errors makes for professional presentations. Those making them go to great lengths to research their fields but then try to explain their work to others through amateur presentations and don’t apply the same standard of professionalism to this latter aspect of their work. The result of yesterday’s conference was a missed opportunity for the audience to learn.
Needless to say this lack of professionalism lowered the tone of the conference. Add to this the invitation only seemed to have gone to a selected few people in academia and the members of the public service (I stumbled on it by accident) which obviously reduced the extent of contributions from the floor. Even though it was on Aged Care (and supposed to be a dialogue) there were few older people participating and apparently the invitation had not been extended to aged care providers so there were even fewer of them, if any. Aged Care is a huge and expensive part of both state and national budgets and involves a large section of the population, particularly when we include workers in the industry, and needs a much wider involvement from all relevant sections than we had yesterday.
What really concerns me is that none of the suggestions made and ideas canvassed makes a contribution to older people believing in themselves and being made to feel that they and their lives are worthwhile, when they are not involved. Even if we can come up with a recipe for acceptable and appropriate standards in health care for older people this approach only meets their physical needs. The way it is being organised, if this conference is typical, does nothing for their self-esteem. The days of Universities indulging in Ivory Tower knowledge and politics belong to the last century.
Next June I will be travelling to Seoul for an International Conference organised by the Gerontology and Geriatrics Associations which will hopefully be more inclusive. I entered 4 abstracts in the hope that one would be accepted and have ended up being asked to make 1 oral presentation and 3 posters. From what I have heard about South Korea I am expecting a high standard as they seem to be making great progress in so many areas. It will be interesting to see firstly their attitude towards their own older people and secondly the provision they make for them, both at family and state level. Conferences invite contributions from all over the world yet the attributes of the host country still seems to shine through.
In aged care, and any aspects of ageing, it is vitally important that older people are involved throughout the process for it to make a meaningful contribution to successful ageing. This is largely reflected in the extent to which older people are invited to, and do, participate in any form of conference.
My wait to find out if my thesis will be accepted for a Ph D is nearly over. I have now heard back from the two examiners. One is even more supportive than she was last time but the other has retreated and wants me to fail. He isn’t even consistent with what he said last time it was submitted to him. Previously he said that it contained material worth publishing but this time not, even though it is largely the same document.
I think the clue to his thinking is his statement that he describes me as ageist for asserting that research teams do not include older people and I am not acknowledging the age of many researchers (the sentence was grammatically incorrect so it was difficult to understand what he was trying to say). In reading the research there is rarely if ever an acknowledgement of older people being involved (as there should be if they were involved) and certainly in my attendance at conferences I rarely see, or hear the voices of, other older people.
A couple of years ago the British government decided that grants for research into ageing would only be given if older people were involved. It is only a matter of time before we follow the same path here. It obviously would produce better research which is why the UK government has introduced it. The problem is that it places in doubt research done prior to this and therefore the whole careers of researchers in the field. No wonder he is against my Ph D being accepted if he feels threatened by it. As I’ve said before there are so many parallels between the way older people are treated today and the way women were in the past. Women would have had to fight to have their voices heard in the literature on women’s issues, and they weren’t allowed to participate in conferences on the subject. I seem to be following a long line of discrimination.
So it raises the question of the difference getting my Ph D or not will make. I have been given permission by Alzheimer’s to interview their members to see whether my assertion that we need a purpose in all stages of life, including the later stage, could prevent, or delay the progress, of the disease. Research shows that if people with Parkinson’s disease have a purpose in life the progress of the disease is slowed. Will I be allowed to pursue this with Alzheimer’s if I don’t have a Ph D? I don’t know.
My other dream is to write a book on ageing for older people so we understand ourselves better. This will still go ahead but it will be accepted more if it is written by a ‘Dr’. At least by the end of this month the waiting should be over. I just have to wait for a panel to decide. Disappointingly my numerous presentations at International and regional conferences aren’t regarded as an acknowledgement that the academic community accepts my research nor are my recent invitations to address two aged care services communities, indicating that my work is acknowledged by them, accepted as recognition of my work. Academia is a strange place.
As one gets older one’s attitude to life changes. I suspect part of it is that there is a new degree of uncertainty about one’s future. If I didn’t have so many plans for my future I would probably have more of the tolerance and serenity I have always associated with being older!
I was originally told that the examiner’s responses to my thesis would be available by mid-September, time which I set aside for winding down after my 7 year commitment to the research involved. Now the deadline is dragging on apparently endlessly I find the situation more difficult to cope with. If I do get a positive response then the examiners are likely to want changes made which I would want to make immediately and get the whole thing over so I can settle down to the next step in my life. Getting involved in something else I can just drop is difficult.
The first thing I want to do when I am ‘free’ is to research any link between my work and Alzheimer’s disease. If there is then maybe it could help to prevent it or at least reduce its prevalence. It is a horrible disease and is on the increase as the population increases.
I also want to write a book, for older people, about ageing successfully. This week I was talking to an established author who indicated that it was likely to be a best seller, this is the second published author to tell me that. I want to get on with it!
Another dream was to set up a website run by older people for older people. With advice from my son I’ve done this but it is having teething problems. It is called Over65.net but google will only show results for Over65.org so it is almost impossible to reach. Apparently google is so rich and powerful it has no need to care about its individual customers, which seems to be 21st century policy in many parts of the business world. We revere wealth so much as long as the money is rolling in standards are abandoned. I need to see if I can get round the problem. With millions of people over 65 in the US alone, and half of them using the internet, we could be a powerful force and create a much better world if we had that means of communicating with each other.
Meanwhile I need to fill another day!
Currently I am awaiting the examiners comments on my thesis. There won’t be much difference in my plans after that except that if I have the title ‘Doctor’ in front of my name it will give more credibility to what I say, particularly among researchers into ageing and the public at large. Whichever way the verdict goes I feel as though as an older person I have a split personality, my past and my age (now 75), and the two tend not to be compatible in the eyes of society. I often worry about people in old people’s homes (under whatever up-graded title these places now operate!) who are assessed on their wrinkles, not for the brains behind them. The concept of ‘old and senile’ is hard to change.
I have just been reading the work of people like Friedan and Butler, which applied to the situation of the ageing in the US. Like so many academics in this field they operated in a ‘sheltered workshop’ in which they were able to continue on with their work which largely meant mixing with younger people and the realties of life for other older people was not something they encountered. This seems to apply to the many older people who are able to continue with their work long past retirement age, including the older Australians I was privileged to interview for my thesis. It is the majority, the ones who retire without being able to replace work with something comparable, who are the visible sign of the ageing in the community.
These are the people who society groups as useless and a burden on the community. This is what I want to change by giving older people a belief in themselves and their capabilities. As I have pointed out before, this ageism attitude has parallels with sexism and racism. It seems as though society has to have a pecking order. If we can abolish ageism the world (and older people) will be much better but will society need to look around for another group to put at the bottom of its pecking order or will it learn to manage without such a hierarchy? We need to be alert for this but let’s get rid of ageism first.
As I wait for the examiners of my thesis to come up with a verdict I am trying to move forward to the next stage of my life. I am still intending to write a book about my research but this time I want to aim it at older people. In my last attempt I tried to write something that would appeal to this group and to academics from the field of gerontology but the two groups have little in common. The latter seem to be established in the ‘publish or perish’ world of academia which seems to have little to do with the real world of the ageing.
I have presented papers at several international conferences, as well as here in Australia, but I’m beginning to realise what I am saying has fallen on deaf ears. The academics attending them know what they want to hear, which seems to have little to do with real life ageing, and are deaf to all else. I realised this after I presented a paper at a conference on ageing, jointly organised by the gerontologists and the aged care providers. The response to my talk was much more positive and I was invited to present it at the state conference of the care providers who are the real workers at the ageing coal face. I have also been invited to speak at the annual dinner of a group of care providers. This seems to be where the real action is.
As a result of all this it has occurred to me that if we want change it must come from ourselves, the older cohort. Unfortunately many of us are no longer capable of chaining ourselves to garden railings and marching through the streets as the suffragettes did to reverse sexism so I realised that I was going to have to follow my own advice and go on-line to unite us. Fortunately our local Writers Centre, which is very pro-active, is running short courses on such things as using Facebook and twitter to promote our writing and interests so that should give me a boost up. In theory, older people across the developed world are suffering from the same problem (ageism) and are treated as second class citizens so that we should be able to unite through on-line media and achieve a better deal, not only for ourselves but also for our countries and the world. With all our knowledge, wisdom and experience we have a lot to offer. If we step back and look at the present world it definitely needs all these attributes.
Meanwhile the on-line field is one where I am definitely wearing ‘L’ plates. I need to work my way up quickly. What enormous strength and influence we could have if the many millions of older people in the world were to unite through this means under the common banner of better conditions and respect for ourselves, our countries and the world in which we all live. If you doubt what I am saying watch the news tonight and listen as though you are not part of the world being described; watch and listen as an outsider. The polluted world and its often warring inhabitants are not a pretty sight are they?
The world has been a much better place, and smarter, since women in many countries united and presented a common front to achieve their rightful place in the world. Now it is time for older people to do the same, using the internet to overcome any physical problems we may have. We have a unique opportunity to work towards the type of world of which we can be proud.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Audrey Guy.com 
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