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After all, it will happen to them eventually, unless they die young.
Although I remember being given books and quite a bit of instruction about puberty, adolescence, and general health, the whole topic of what happens when your body is on the downward arc was a grim mystery.
I feel that it would make sense to educate young people about what they can expect on that "arc." Maybe they would take better care of themselves, and maybe they would be less inclined to view Old people as a separate, inferior species.
W.C. Fields is credited with saying "youth is wasted on the young."
I'm not sure younger people would have a real interest in that. They get to watch their parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles age. Whether or not they learn something from it I would suppose some do and some don't.
*We try to teach young people many things that don't interest most of them - supposedly, for their own good.
*If young people think they're invincible, and therefore don't need to learn about aging, then why bother teaching them to drive? They can pick that up from watching their elders, too.
I still think it would be helpful for young people themselves to know what to expect, and to know that these changes are either normal (so, stop thinking of the Old people as disgusting, etc.) or preventable (so, continue to do XYZ if you want, but here's what's gonna happen).
*We try to teach young people many things that don't interest most of them - supposedly, for their own good.
*If young people think they're invincible, and therefore don't need to learn about aging, then why bother teaching them to drive? They can pick that up from watching their elders, too.
I still think it would be helpful for young people themselves to know what to expect, and to know that these changes are either normal (so, stop thinking of the Old people as disgusting, etc.) or preventable (so, continue to do XYZ if you want, but here's what's gonna happen).
Really?? You are comparing learning to drive to learning about aging?
There are wide variations among us in terms of how we age. What would we teach young people about aging?
What I wish someone had taught me when I was young was how to manage money. It's tough to learn budgeting in your 60's.
Exactly! Why don't we teach young people how to make a budget and how to save and invest? Show them how money grows over the course of decades. It should a required part of a young person's education.
There are wide variations among us in terms of how we age. What would we teach young people about aging?
What I wish someone had taught me when I was young was how to manage money. It's tough to learn budgeting in your 60's.
Yes, I am in the same situation. I am in my early 70s and did not take budgeting very seriously until only recently. Unfortunately, for me, spending was comforting. There wasn't much else doing that.
And of course, none of them will ever be able to retire, especially as Social Security will have ceased to exist because those greedy geezer Boomers used it all up.
Do schools even teach what we knew as "Social Studies" anymore? Somehow I doubt it. They're too busy teaching to the tests and trying to turn every child into the next tech savvy Bill Gates.
Since all will, in time, lose their parents and grandparents, perhaps some siblings and maybe even die young themselves, at a minimum they should be taught that dying is as much a part of life as is living. That there's no disgrace in aging, that the body will fail to some extent over the years and lose elasticity, that getting older doesn't necessarily mean losing your faculties, these are all valuable lessons that should be taught along with respect where deserved, forbearance and some degree of understanding, appreciation or at least tolerance. Whatever has, to date, made their lives pleasant and worth living has been made by people older than them.
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