{"id":44045,"date":"2018-06-12T14:01:00","date_gmt":"2018-06-12T21:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=44045"},"modified":"2018-06-12T14:01:00","modified_gmt":"2018-06-12T21:01:00","slug":"how-does-a-society-lose-respect-for-experience-and-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/how-does-a-society-lose-respect-for-experience-and-age\/","title":{"rendered":"How does a society lose respect for experience and age?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

In the days since\u00a0Academe<\/em>\u00a0published my essay, \u201cThe Monument and the Wrecking Crew: Ageism in the Academy<\/a>,\u201d\u00a0which explored the misery of individuals and the high costs to society at large of losing tenure, additional faculty members have written to tell me their formerly hidden stories.<\/p>\n

The ways of getting rid of tenured people, comparatively protected from illegitimate expulsions, turn out to be ingeniously painful.<\/p>\n

Barbara Serenata, tenured in a Midwestern state university, had been needled into leaving by a chair who asked about retirement at every birthday of distinguished older faculty and deprived them of plum teaching assignments. Sabine Samuely, associate professor in a private Massachusetts graduate school (who, like Barbara, asked that her\u00a0name be\u00a0changed), explains the demoralization she and her age peers feel at her university, where this is the third year of offering early retirement incentives. Incentivizing retirement, a widespread practice, may seem fair. But Samuely feels marginalized and unwanted. \u201cGetting rid of everyone who has grey hair makes those who remain highly visible, as people who are overstaying their welcome. It is a disheartening time to be at X. I think this is the tidal wave of the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

In terms of telling your age-related story, this feels like the early days of the #MeToo movement. One formerly tenured woman, who thanks me for \u201cgiving voice to my story too\u201d adds, \u201cand it hurts to read it.\u201d Because of pain, embarrassment, and helplessness, it takes courage to speak.<\/p>\n

Higher education used to be a secure location of respect for aging-into-wisdom, because of its tradition of admiring the expert knowledge of graying professors. But tenure is crumbling, a monument besieged. The percentage of tenured faculty has declined from 45 \u00a0percent (in 1975) to about 21 percent now (AAUP data). In many of America\u2019s 2,000 higher-ed institutions,\u00a0respected senior people are replaced by adjuncts\u2014contingent employees, usually young, ill-paid, non-unionized, hired by the course or semester;\u00a061% are women<\/a>.\u202fThe 80-year-old institution of tenure is becoming a relic in the encroaching gig economy.<\/p>\n

Despite the values taught in their humanities courses, many college presidents\u00a0mimic other powerful large employers in racing to the bottom in faculty pay and collective rights. Corporation heads and Republican office-holders alike deploy the mean-spirited strategy that I call\u00a0middle ageism.\u00a0<\/em>To justify hostile employment practices, language disparages experience. One man, on\u00a0NPR<\/a>\u00a0of all places, argues, against older faculty members who opt to continue teaching, \u201cA certain degree of churn is healthy and productive [and brings in] fresh blood, fresh ideas, people up-to-date on teaching techniques and research techniques.\u201d<\/p>\n

Advocates of healthy \u201cchurn\u201d\u2014a form of age shaming\u2014slam excellent\u00a0people\u00a0everywhere for being out of touch, uncreative, unproductive, in contrast to the superior young. Not only in high tech but in Hollywood, in factories and on Main Street, in advertising and even medicine, midlife workers are not only beaten down by stereotypes about decline, but relentlessly warned there are \u201cnot enough jobs for the young.\u201d The young, of course, start cheaper and may stay cheap as the gig system captures them.<\/p>\n

At midlife, long-term unemployed people are less likely to find employment, and then, when \u201cdiscouraged,\u201d are expressly omitted from official unemployment figures to make the economy look better than it is, which in turn makes them look like failures. Age discrimination destroys self-esteem, ends careers, shatters families. \u201cOver-the-hill\u201d stereotypes cover up the transition from valuable seniority systems to the ill-paid disposable-labor system that is the 1%\u2019s big idea of the future of work for most of us.<\/p>\n

New Arguments for Seniority<\/strong><\/p>\n

Higher education is actually only one of America\u2019s long-revered seniority systems. The others\u2014the military, civil-service, unionized public schools\u2014also depend on tenure. It isn\u2019t adequately recognized that\u00a0these social and economic institutions underwrite respect for aging-past-youth\u00a0and the value of experience. They show aging positively\u2014as the source of recognized achievements and pay raises, not depreciation and a cascade of demotions.<\/p>\n

Through exposure to the tenure system over eighty years,\u00a0college students in billions of classroom encounters learned subconsciously what aging-over-the-life-course means.\u00a0They absorbed the message that longevity\u00a0counts<\/em>\u2013not just in families that respect elders, but in institutions entrusted with their education. Seniority possesses symbolic power for the millions fortunately still exposed to it. The young need experiences of honored seniority in order to look forward to growing older rather than dreading it.<\/p>\n

But now almost every system that retains seniority is being undermined. In states, legislatures\u00a0starve the colleges and universities. The Trump administration is trying\u00a0runarounds to defeat\u00a0federal\u00a0civil service protections. In unionized public schools, mighty billionaire donors badmouth\u00a0teachers fighting to\u00a0control curriculum and working conditions and feed their families.<\/p>\n

Anti-ageism makes a magnificent fresh case for tenure, beyond its duty of upholding First Amendment speech by preventing irrational firings. Every worker needs more security and income than the exploitative gig economy provides. Democracy needs seniority to keep intergenerational relations humane. Seniority systems soften other effects of\u202fageism as everyone ascends their ladder of years.<\/p>\n

It should be an\u00a0ethical imperative for any cultural system to value aging. An urgent understanding of the grave losses suffered as these monuments crumble, may lead to battling on behalf of all our surviving age-affirming systems. More than ever, America needs a corps of long-term workers in decent jobs\u2014not working as sub-minimum wage greeters at Walmart\u2014for everyone to look up to, in their own families and in society.\u00a0This is social philosophy in the service of economic\u202fjustice.\u00a0We might yet make the\u00a0contest between seniority and ageism a winnable fight. Join\u00a0#MeTooAgainstAgeism<\/strong><\/p>\n

Author Bio:\u00a0<\/strong> Margaret Morganroth Gullette, PhD, is the author of\u00a0<\/em>Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People\u00a0and a resident scholar at the Women\u2019s Studies Research Center, Brandeis University.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the days since\u00a0Academe\u00a0published my essay, \u201cThe Monument and the Wrecking Crew: Ageism in the Academy,\u201d\u00a0which explored the misery of individuals and the high costs to society at large of losing tenure, additional faculty members have written to tell me their formerly hidden stories. The ways of getting rid of tenured people, comparatively protected from […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":44046,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[209326],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-44045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-change","tag-incentivizing-retirement"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow does a society lose respect for experience and age? - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/how-does-a-society-lose-respect-for-experience-and-age\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How does a society lose respect for experience and age? - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the days since\u00a0Academe\u00a0published my essay, \u201cThe Monument and the Wrecking Crew: Ageism in the Academy,\u201d\u00a0which explored the misery of individuals and the high costs to society at large of losing tenure, additional faculty members have written to tell me their formerly hidden stories. 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