institutional ageism

 A few months ago, I was invited to a meeting by the local Member of Parliament to talk about what the group Wilson Senior Advisory does for seniors. The meeting was scheduled and included other organizations in the Tri-Cities that deal with seniors and their issues. I was appreciative of the offer to speak. I did and the message appeared to be well received. What struck me while watching a great Netflix series called “Explained”. In one of the episodes, they talk about why how interact with each other in an episode called Political Correctness Explained. One of the points that was made is that we like to deal with people and ideas that are the same as us, and we don’t like change.

When I was at the meeting dealing with senior issues, I realized that I was the only senior, (over 65) all of the other groups were represented by younger people (under 55) and I realized that seniors will have a problem getting their ideas through because the people running the programs do not understand at a practical level the issues we deal with at times. They understand them on a theoretical level, which is good for a time.

I am dealing with this in the opening of our new community center, as the programmers and the managers are all under 50 and therefore have an understanding but not a clear understanding of issues. For example, the programmers have put senior programs into the facility from morning until 3:00 and they have opened up the rooms to youth and ended all senior programs at 3:00. The assumption they are making is that by 3:00 seniors need to rest and therefore programming for them after 3:00 is a waste of time as the programs will not be filled. A form of institutional ageism.

However, as I thought about this, I realized that seniors have an opportunity to encourage the city to set up some intergenerational programming from 3:00 to 6:00, so rather than the seniors being kicked out at 3:00, or having to move, and youth taking over, perhaps there is another way, and we can use the time to set up intergenerational programming working with the youth.  I will let you know how the city and the seniors react to the idea.