Ageism hurts the young, too

One of the things I'm truly excited about when it comes to leaving college is that I will no longer be surrounded solely by people in my own age group. Having people to look up to really does improve my quality of life, and I've missed that type of interaction since leaving high school, where I had sports coaches and social studies teachers who were my friends and mentors at the same time.

I'm a frequent visitor of so-called 'elderblogs' (see Blogroll to the right for some links) for similar reasons--there's a whole lot to learn from people who've lived twice as long as I have. Ronni Bennett's Time Goes By gives insightful and penetrating commentary on "what it's really like to get older." Having watched my own mom struggle to find a new job earlier this year--she thankfully now has a fantastic position at the British School in Tokyo--and hear her talk about how difficult it is even for people in their early 50s to find meaningful work, Ronni's post on the worsening condition of ageism in this country really hit close to home. According to a new study by the International Longevity Center:

• Negative language describing elders is in abundant use: fossil, old biddy, codger, over the hill, old goat, greedy geezer, coot, etc.
• Medical slang is equally prejudicial. GOMER means “Get Out of My Emergency Room” and usually refers to elders. People in hospitals awaiting transfer to nursing homes are referred to as “bed blockers.”
• On television, only two percent of characters are older than 65 (that age group represents 12 percent of the population and is growing rapidly) and they are usually portrayed as foolish, weak and confused.
• About 20 percent of workers report that age discrimination in the workplace is increasing.

Marginalization of the elderly doesn't just hurt them, it hurts the younger generation too. I lost all four of my grandparents before I really had the chance to talk to them about their lives, and as a result, will always feel slightly hollow about my "roots" and ancestry. Do we really want the same thing to happen on a national or even global scale?