Mike's Minute: Why are we concerned about the age of workers?

The Mike Hosking Breakfast

We've got more ageism, this time in education.

Unions are "concerned" as more teachers work past retirement age.

This in part is the trouble with unions.

1) They aren't keen on work to start with,

2) They are bogged down in old fashioned rules and views of the world.

What is retirement and how do you know you are past it?

They refer of course to Super and this tired, old business of thinking that when Super kicks in you must check out.

Obviously, the world has changed and is changing, just not that quickly in union land.

At 64-years-old if you're loving teaching, somehow chronologically at 65-years-old that desire and love of pursuit needs to be shelved, as you wander off collecting your retirement income and presumably filling your days with bowls and walks.

8000 people teaching are 65-years-old or over. That’s double what it used to be 10 years ago.

But then a lot is different to what it was 10 years ago.

Beyond the numbers, does anyone ask any questions?

Like, are they doing it because they have to, as opposed to want to? Bit of a difference I would have thought.

Most importantly for teaching, given the unions insist on the mad-cap business of time in the classroom being the measure for income, are these oldies any good?

Could they be better given their experience and institutional knowledge than the 21-year-old just into the classroom and looking for all the world out of her depth?

In sex education in 6th form at Linwood High in the late 1980's, we were 16 and 17-years-old and the teacher might have been 20-years-old. She looked like she wanted to die as the diagrams of the you-know-what's came out.

As you can tell the memory is seared in my mind 40 years later.

New isn't always best. Young doesn’t always trump older and passion and skill above all else is what should drive presence in the workplace or classroom.

Are you good? Do you like what you do? Are you making a difference?

If the answer is yes, then at what point would you be remotely interested in age, far less be concerned?

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