I'm not as smart as my kids.
Yes, I have the wisdom of age. I've dealt with things they haven't; you might say I have the wisdom of experience. I've lived through my father's early death (age 60) and my mother's long decline--I'm smarter than she is--she's 96, and she has to be told what to do when she goes to the bathroom. She was one smart lady in her prime: she ran a school for 41 years, but her brain has atrophied (as has mine, but not anywhere near as much), and she has Alzheimer's. I've also lived through my children's childhood, adolescence (no wonder I'm gray) and early adulthood. I've been married for 30 years to the same woman. All those things impart a certain wisdom; they might equip me for the boardroom, but my experience has not trained me to work in the modern work place.
I mean it when I say my grown children are smarter than I am. If I were to hire someone for an office job, I'd hire one of them, not me. They've been working on computers since they were children; I've been working on computers for the last 30 years, or so, but I was 40 when I began (although I was in my early 30's when I used a mainframe to do the statistical manipulations for my dissertation).
It's not just computers. In the current work place, it is taken for granted that you can do many things at once. My children would write papers and IM their friends at the same time, and my son watches TV while texting his friends, and searching on his computer, now. I simply can't do that, or anything like it; I grew up in a different era.
If a company were to hire someone for any job that requires up-to-date technology--that includes practically anything that isn't just manual labor, or repetitive assembly-line work--a younger applicant would naturally be favored. This is not because companies don't like older people--older people run most of them, after all--but because, if they have any skills or education, younger people would be better able to deal with whatever technology is used, and would tend to be more flexible in learning new ways of doing things. They also tend to hire at a lower price, and yet would be able to work for the company for a longer period and have fewer health problems--except for pregnancy and childrearing.
There is an On the Other Hand: older people tend to be more literate, so, if old-fashioned literacy is required for a job, older people should be favored.
Very old people, like my mother and others in their 80's and 90's, have, in most, but not all, instances, lost a lot of their previous mental capacity; brains age, ,even if some people don't get Alzheimer's or senile dementia. As I indicated before, at age 70, I know my brain has atrophied somewhat. I was startled to hear a doctor say about a CAT scan of my wife's brain: "It has normal, age-appropriate atrophy." She was only 54 at the time; she's still formidable intellectually, as our brilliant children will attest.
There are laws against age discrimination, like the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. The Supreme Court ruled in 2009 (Gross v FBI Financial Services) that the burden of proof for proving that age is the only reason for discrimination rests with the employee. There is a bill in Congress (Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination) that responds to this: requiring employers to prove that age was not the only reason for their action. However, unlike race, sexual preference or faith, age really could be a real reason for demotion or firing if the job requires a higher level of mental agility than most older people have.
I don't think either side has clearly demonstrated that age-based discrimination is comparable to racial discrimination. I do think, despite being an older person myself, that age is an increasing handicap. Therefore, the older the person in question, the more he or she should have to prove that age is not a factor in his or her particular employment. Given my experience of age, that seems only fair, but what would also be fair would be a generous retirement plan for anyone disemployed because of age. Older people shouldn't just be thrown on the ash heap.
If that makes me an "ageist," so be it.
