Intergenerational activity benefits students and elders

By: A. Eli Tukachinsky

Posted: 5/19/09

Senility, sloth, dementia and dependency came first to the minds of Brandeis students musing over the concept of aging at the Waltham Group's Generations Symposium held April 30. These historic stereotypes fortunately do not deter our elders from offering the college community advice for living active and healthy lives. Yet university administrations rarely attempt to remove the unhealthy contempt separating young and old. This should change.

A branch of Brandeis' Waltham Group dubbed Companions to Elders builds strong connections with the elderly population. Kudos to these volunteers for successfully relating to our forgotten generation of seniors. Through the Generations Symposium, they attempted to bridge the gap of unfamiliarity between students and seniors and initiate on-campus discourse. Speaker Prof. Margie Lachman (PSYC) posited that a classroom "dialogue across generations can be enriching for all." In the spirit of campus and curricular change, it would benefit our school to integrate an eager body of elderly students.

Although Companions to Elders maintains success in interacting with senior citizens, volunteer coordinator Audrey Lamb '11 believes in greater possibilities than a moment to "relax and get a perspective … on finals week." Lachman persistently reminds us that the "unrepresentative group" of senior citizens in nursing homes presents only one of the conceivable venues for association. Many religious denominations within Christianity, Judaism and Islam support intergenerational interactions in order to motivate both the young and the old. Within the workplace, mentorship programs employ senior staff to guide promising protégés with their own expertise and experience. Organizations such as Help Age Society encourage self-supporting elderly people within the U.S., Europe and Asia in pursuit of education and social service. If we learn from these examples, we can engage students by adding a dynamic group of active seniors to classrooms. If alumni and senior citizens from the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Brandeis' program providing education for Waltham's students of a different age group, voluntarily attended weekly sessions, they would not only contribute to campus diversity but also could be capable of changing our negative attitudes toward the elderly.

Similar cooperation between intergenerational volunteers at Brandeis would be far from innovative: University of California, Berkeley holds off-campus meetings with the elderly as part of their curriculum. Students learn communication and oral skills from experience, while the elderly stimulate their hungry minds. Many participant testimonies confirm the success of activities varying from lectures to student-led yoga classes. Essentially, campuses such as Berkeley's give students access to a growing population that will be our clients, coworkers, and eventually peers.

The global public's average age increases exponentially due to the stubborn postponement of death through improved medication, geriatrics and research in gerontology. Our administration does little to encourage the study of the demographic changes caused by our aging parents and the baby boomers. We typically engage in age-segregated activities and goals, but many methods exist for our community to reap the benefits of a widespread and natural relationship with senior citizens. Judging from the Generations Symposium, undergraduates and elderly people hold common misconceptions about each other that cause natural disdain and avoidance. Liberated from the barriers of embedded ageism, we could discover that perseverance and ambition rather than senescence and decline are the hallmarks of the Boston area's aged population.