Overview:
When schools sideline veteran educators because of age, they lose the experience, insight, and perspective that could most strengthen teaching and improve student outcomes.
When I turned 60, I received a great birthday card. On the front was a referee blowing a whistle and shouting, “You’re old!” Inside was the same ref, thumb pointed over his shoulder, yelling, “You’re out!” And that’s pretty much the fate of old people–ejected from the game. Just when they finally have enough experience and knowledge to understand the game and to improve a team’s performance, they are expected to become irrelevant and invisible–preferably neither seen nor heard.
Several factors contribute to this sense that old people are finished. The young want their turn, so there are societal expectations that the old will step aside. Older workers are often more expensive, so there are also some economic pressures. And old people themselves often contribute to attitudes about them. Many are eager to retire. They talk of being tired of work, ready to pursue other interests. And, alas, many need to retire because they are no longer productive–because they have actually become irrelevant, anchored to the past and unwilling to understand the present or imagine a future that isn’t the past. Too often, these are the ones who refuse to retire and become the source of the impatience with which the young respond to the old.
But lost in the cumulative perception that old people have little to offer are those old people whose understanding and vision could produce transformative changes in their professions if anyone recognized their potential. Typically, that potential is lost in an assumption that old people have nothing worthwhile to say. Perception shapes reality. The same creative idea delivered from the lips of a 45-year-old and a 70-year-old will not be heard as the same idea. Of course, because transformative ideas often require the experience and perspective of age, they are less likely ever to be spoken by the 45-year-old. This need for more seasoned insights may well be one of the reasons that truly meaningful progress is so slow in so many human endeavors. It may be the reason that humans are more likely to repeat past mistakes and to constantly reinvent the wheel.
For the past few years, I have been watching one old, retired man attempt to change the culture of youth hockey so that fewer players will be hurt in that sport. His ideas are not merely new; given the history and culture of hockey, they are revolutionary.
In addition to being an actor and teacher, Tom Babson was, for most of his life, a hockey player–Peewee, Bantam, high school, college, semi-pro, and adult leagues. He was also head coach of women’s hockey at Boston College and a coach for youth hockey. He knows a lot about hockey. But he also spent decades slamming his head into the boards and the ice and getting clobbered by sticks and elbows. The result was sixteen concussions, the first of which occurred when he was 6 years old. Now, having just turned 80, he also knows a lot about concussions and degenerative brain disease. Like many athletes with this condition, he struggles with grinding headaches, rage, depression, and some cognitive dysfunction.
Despite his age and suffering, he has spent the many years since hanging up his skates researching and thinking about the causes of serious injury in youth hockey. Although he struggles to find the words, his ideas are sound. Some years ago, he managed to present his conclusions and solutions to various administrators at the annual meetings of USA Hockey (the governing body for American youth hockey) and Mass Hockey (the Massachusetts governing body).
In contrast to the usual wrangling about who is most responsible for failing to protect the players (coaches or referees), Babson proposed a strategy that substitutes communication for blame. It’s a strategy based on a deep understanding of the game and the culture of hockey–and on the new perspective that aging can generate. He didn’t see the issues this clearly when he was caught up in the heat of coaching. He couldn’t have invented this strategy when he was 45, but it’s a strategy that would keep players safer by fundamentally changing the relationships among all the people involved (players, coaches, refs, fans) by addressing the causes of escalating violence during games.
The administrators thanked him, patted him (gently) on the head and sent him home. Pity and kindness may have motivated them to allow him to speak, but they saw and heard just some powerless old guy who used to play and coach struggling to shape his words. They did nothing with his suggestions; they didn’t respond to his offers to help implement a trial of his solutions. Business as usual. In the year following Babson’s presentation, roughly 12,590 middle and high school players sustained serious sports injuries. It’s painful to watch Babson’s frustration, impotence, and despair, to see him consigned to a trashcan like Hamm’s parents in Beckett’s Endgame.
Like Babson, a lot of old people in many professions, even if they don’t suffer from brain injury, need to retire from the rigors and pace of full-time work. They “are not now that strength which in old days moved heaven and earth.” So they lack the former position and prestige that made them visible and relevant and imbued their voice with authority that couldn’t be ignored. But many of them–those who continue to stay current with the latest thinking and research in their profession–remain a largely untapped resource of substantive thought, creative insights, and innovative ideas. A society that automatically dismisses wrinkles and wattles as signs of tedious senility may be hip, hilarious, or really dope, but it’s, like, so totally a waste.
