Hi Tino,

the recap of the discussion can be found here :)

...seems that I have missed reading this paper previously!

Sorry that I have to leave the discussion for today (will follow the outcomes in a couple of days), it has been very inspiring!

Very well said, Christin. We have a great challenge ahead to rebuild post-COVID and also great opportunities to redefine perceptions about how to engage with older generations. I look forward to learning further from you given your gerontology research expertise.

This is an interesting discussion.  Coming from a small country I think the rural community is tightly knit and consequently the digital domain is not a priority.  

"It is more efficient to train the younger colleague than to invest in an older colleague!"

aka

"You can't teach an old dog new tricks."

I agree with challenging all those stereotypes you mention above and feel it's crucial to raise awareness of these because stereotypes can take just a second to form and gain recognition and more than a generation to redefine and 'correct'.

Dear Regina I totally agree with your point of view.  We cannot generalise and in the years to come we will also be considered as old so this is interesting. 

There are some good practices from companies that organise mentoring or master classes that make use of the more experienced employees.

I do agree with you, I feel similar!

Yes I agree your point of view Tino.  At a certain point we need to shape the younger generations in our context and pass on our experience in the field.  This is crucial rather than embarking in new ventures ourselves.  

The transition to retirement can be gradual. People can discover new kinds of work to do, or have time and financial safety to risk to create a business... We have now some old people working as influencers, a very new profession! 

I completely agree. There is a huge difference between someone that works in an office and someone that works in a factory behind an assembly line. The level of body degradation in these positions is very much like day and night. Thus people need the choice in a certain age to have a say about what they want for themselves in their next period of life.

I completely agree with you, Christin, concerning the "have to" and "can". As a matter of fact, when I hear voices discussing the issue of working until 70 or longer and what it means for lifelong learning , it makes me think of who is really meant - the ones who want to work longer, or the ones who have to - and if we talk about the latter, is it because of the age pyramid, or because those who have to work longer spent many years in low paid jobs, had to do family work for a period or whatever? 

Thank you Christin.

The 'learning' that underpins our journey through later life is, for me, the continuous participation-reification process shwon as the blue zig-zag line in the diagram at https://bit.ly/3wIU5Tc which represents the 'meaning making' that our continuous participation in 'community' (real physical, or virtual) facilitates. Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

My empirical work shows that in my own village very few older people are at all interested in formal learning, though a significant majority tell me that they learn from the internet all the time. That said, I believe we learn in everything we do. I asked all the people I interviewed "What does learning mean to you?", and one woman said, after thinking about it, "Learning is being changed by experience, so that you can tackle things better the next time" which I think is still the best definition I ever heard. It's universal ...

At a philosophical level, Carl Jung's concept of individuation proposes that it is only in later life that we discover our real self as our identity accommodates to that lived experience.

At a practical level, it's about making the best of what we have, in an age-friendly community (my local audit is at https://bit.ly/3yXPgak based on the WHO Age Friendliness criteria) there are learning stimulii and opportunites everywhere and the barriers you refer to are all in there.

I believe that bursting through them is more about building local community capital rather than top-down programmes targetting segments of the community.