My friend told me I might want to look at the article by Phyllis Korkki of the New York Times called “The Science of Older and Wiser”. Some of the comments made in the article struck a chord in my recent experience. I taught college students for more than 36 years, about half the hours with undergrads and half with graduate teachers getting further credits or master’s degrees. Anyone who teaches that mixture will tell you that the older students are tons more serious.
It is not all that mysterious. Humans about the age of 20 years are at their prime for thinking about, caring about and wanting to interact with members of the opposite sex. Nature has prepared them to want to mate, which according to nature leads to parenthood, unless modern methods intervene. That means that students of that age, even those sampled and chosen and sifted and tested, often have other things on their mind than intellectual activities, books, theories and ideas. But, by the time people have jobs as teachers, are experienced adults workers, have had responsibility for pupils’ behavior and learning, they are much more focused on learning, growing, developing their minds.
The article linked above discusses older people’s minds. In work my wife and I have been doing recently with our older people’s organization, we have found repeatedly that professors who have taught undergraduates for years are shocked at the depth and number of questions our members raise with them. It is apparent to many of our presenters that their audience is chock full of questions and can easily take over the presentation with them. Some acquiesce and simply take questions, which are good natured but provocative and far-reaching. Others state that they worked hard on their presentation and the slides they have with them and will take no more questions until they have reached the end of their talk.
In early April, I am scheduled to give the group a presentation on the use of electronic gadgets from smartphones to iPads to computers. Many people all over the world have noted little kids can use an iPad and other electronic gadgets. Many of my senior friends take the sort of pictures I have linked here to be evidence that they themselves are mental failures, that their brains have aged, lost important functions, etc. I know this is not true. My own greatgrandchildren love using iPads but they can’t read, they don’t pay their bills online or off (they don’t have any; they don’t have any money) and they can’t compare to senior citizens mentally.
As Korkki’s article says:
Unfortunately, research shows that cognitive functioning slows as people age. But speed isn’t everything. A recent study in Topics in Cognitive Science pointed out that older people have much more information in their brains than younger ones, so retrieving it naturally takes longer. And the quality of the information in the older brain is more nuanced. While younger people were faster in tests of cognitive performance, older people showed “greater sensitivity to fine-grained differences,” the study found.
That’s it! Fine-grained. The ‘in’ word these days is indeed “nuanced” but these are good,too:
careful
connected
suspicious
Go on: try it. Take your iPad or your smartphone over to a senior citizen, point to a key and say, “Please press this button.” A little kid will press it. The senior citizen will ask
“Who are you? What is your social security number? What is your email address? What is your phone number? Is this a scam? Can you prove that?” and on and on into the night.
Older people know more. They know more to be afraid of. They know more that can go wrong.
