What is the purpose of Professor McKay’s report?

M: Today, we’ve Professor McKay on our Morning Talk Show. Good morning, Professor McKay.
W: Good morning.
M: I’ve heard that you and your team have just completed a report on old age.
W: That’s right.
M: Could you tell me what your report is about?
W: Well, the report basically looks into the various beliefs that people hold about old age and tries to verify them.
M: And what do you think your report can achieve?
W: We hope that it will somehow help people to change their feelings about old age. The problem is that far too many of us believe that most old people are poor, lonely and unhappy. As a result, we tend to find old people, as a group, unattractive. And this is very dangerous for our society.
M: But surely we cannot escape the fact that many old people are lonely and many are sick.
W: No, we can’t. But we must also remember that the proportion of such people, is no greater among the 60-70 age group than among the 50-60 age group.
M: In other words, there is no more mental illness, for example, among the 60s-70s than among the 50s-60s?
W: Right! And why should there be? Why should we expect people to suddenly change when they reach their 60th or 65m birthday any more than they did when they reached their 21st?
M: But one would expect there to be more physical illness among old people, surely?
W: Why should one expect this? After all, those people who reach the age of 65 or 70 are the strong among us. The weak die mainly in childhood, then in their 40s and 50s. Furthermore, by the time people reach 60 or 65, they have learned how to look after themselves. They keep warm, sleep regular hours, and eat sensibly. Of course, some old people do suffer from physical illnesses, but these do not suddenly develop on their 65th birthday. People who are healthy in middle age tend to be healthy in old age, just as one would expect.
M: Do you find that young people these days are not as concerned about their parents as their parents were about theirs?
W: We have found nothing that suggests that family feeling is either dying or dead. There do not appear to be large numbers of young people who are trying, for example, to have their dear old mother locked up in a mental hospital.
M: But don’t many more parents live apart from their married children than used to be the case?
W: True, but this is because many more young families can afford to own their own homes these days than ever before. In other words, parents and their married children usually live in separate households because they prefer it that way, not because the children refuse to have mum and dad living with them.
M: Is this a good thing, do you think?
W: I think that it’s an excellent arrangement. We all like to keep part of our lives private, even from those we love dearly. I certainly don’t think that it’s a sign of the increased loneliness of old age.
M: Are people’s mental abilities affected by old age?
W: Certain changes do take place as we grow older, but this happens throughout life. These changes are very gradual and happen at different times with different people, but, in general, if you know a person well in his middle age and have seen how he deals with events and problems, you will easily recognize him in old age.
M: So that someone who enjoys new experiences, travel, education, and so on in his middle years will usually continue to do so into old age?
W: Exactly. We have carried out some very interesting experiments in which a group of people aged 60-70 and a group aged 30-40 had to learn the same things. The first thing we discovered was that the young group tended to be quicker at learning than the old group. However, although the old group took longer to learn, eventually, they performed as well as the young group. And when we tested the two groups several weeks later, there was again no difference between the two groups.
M: That’s very interesting indeed. What else did your experiments show?
W: Well, one group of old people agreed to attend evening classes for a year to study English and mathematics. In fact, most of this group became so interested in their studies that they continued them for another year. Anyway, we discovered that they did best in the English classes and that most of them steadily improved their ability to communicate in both the written and the spoken language.
M: What about the group who studied mathematics?
W: Well, that’s a different story. There seems to be no doubt that people find maths more difficult as they grow older. Though why this is so, I cannot say.
M: Perhaps pocket calculators will solve this problem.
W: I think you’re right. In fact, I’m sure that you are.
M: Okay. Time for a commercial. Stay tuned; we’ll be right back.