Comments on: An Age Old Concern

By: Heather

Heather — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 22:03:14 +0000

I agree with Damien and Wayne wholeheartedly so there is no need to reiterate these great arguments for inclusively. People’s attitudes change when they are motivated to change and this depends heavily on their experience and how reflective they are. What Scott said was discriminatory and short-sighted but he is voicing what a lot of people think. This usually hidden discrimination affects us all as mentioned earlier. I would like to postulate that those with this strong “anti-age” attitude perhaps have a problematic relationship with their parents? Perhaps they project these feelings onto others of their parent’s generation?
When I was in my twenties I worked well with all decent people regardless of their age – to me a jerk is a jerk even if he/she is 20 or 50. Likewise great people come in all shapes, sizes, colours, cultures, sexual orientation, religious beliefs and ages…
So my advice for what it is worth is for those with strong beliefs that could be limiting their full experience of what the earth has to offer, to start reflecting and perhaps by using some creative problem solving techniques they may discover what is really going on in their own psyche.

By: Damien

Damien — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 08:38:21 +0000

I know many who would agree with you (including myself obviously). I’ve met several people in the course of my studies who have had to confront the same kind of discrimination and I know them all to be intelligent and capable people. I cannot help but think that the discrimination is not just to their detriment, but also to the detriment of those employers who turn them away. When you turn away someone based on their age you are turning away years of experience that offers invaluable perspective.

Thanks for the comment and the applause.

By: Wayne Meissner

Wayne Meissner — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 03:35:11 +0000

I also got a bit annoyed at what Scott said – not just because its particularly bone-headed and myopic of him, but because it seems so un-Atlassian.

Instead of judging people based on their individual merits, he judges them based on some external grouping that they have no control over – it sounds a bit like bigotry. Think about how his quote would sound if you changed “young” to “white” and “old” to “Indian”.

I much prefer to judge people based on whether they can do the damn job, rather than they’re too young, too old, went to QUT instead of UQ, or some other arbitrary discriminator that isn’t directly based on their performance.

Anyway, I applaud your more enlightened view – Ephox just got bumped up a notch in my opinion.