Intergenerational education

Jane Addams. famous social reformer. stated in Democracy and Social Ethics: The Democratic ideal demands of the school that it gives a child's own experience a social value: that it shall teach him to direct his own activities and adjust them to those of other people's . . . . We are impatient with the schools which lay stress on reading and writing. expecting them to rest upon the assumption that all knowledge and interest must be brought to the children through the medium of books. Such an assumption fails to give the child any clue to the life about him or any power to usefully or intelligently connect himself with it. (1902, pp. 180-181) The American Association of Retired Persons found that in 1987. persons over the age of 65 comprised 12% of the population of the United States. whereas in 1900. only four percent of the population was over 65 (Jenkins. Lambert. & Fruit. 1991). A sometimes forgotten resource for schools is this population which includes the elderly, the retired. or the children of yesterday.