Not so long ago, being “old school” meant preferring paper and pencil to a computer, or, in other words, using or doing something more old fashioned or traditional.   Now it seems, being “old school”, especially when paired with someone who is considered to be of a more advanced age, is more of a call to judgement.  If you are “old school”, or more traditional in your thinking, you are not progressive and this apparently is BAD.  Again, when paired with a perception of age, it seems it is a reason to dismiss any contribution someone might have.  There is nothing more insulting or dismissive than someone laughing and saying in a condescending way, “oh you’re so old school”.

Of course, I remember when I was younger thinking that my parents and my teachers were SO OLD and they just didn’t get it.  It wasn’t because they didn’t get it, it was because I didn’t have the experience to understand the vastness of their experiences and insight.  This is not to say that now I agree with everything they did or said, but I see them through different eyes and tend to understand it.  That’s true with anything.  Unless you’re someone who is futuristic in their thinking, or perhaps an “old soul”, while it is hoped you’ll want to learn from someone with experience, sometimes you must experience it yourself before you get it.  The older I get, the more I appreciate learning from old and young alike – there are always things to learn from everyone and innovation can happens when you sync the two.

And that is what I’ve been telling myself as I work with younger colleagues who, because of their experiences from a totally techie or digital standpoint, cannot yet understand that there are and have been other ways of doing things.  That’s not to say that either is bad or good, but sometimes you need to look at a situation or child and decide, from a myriad of choices, both traditional and progressive, what is best for the child.  What we tend to do as a culture who craves constant change is to throw the baby out with the bathwater or change for change sake.  Change can be great.  It can also be counterproductive if there is no thought of the possible end product beforehand and no consideration of the past.  What is it they say?  If you don’t learn from the past you are doomed to repeat it?  It could mean anything from staying in a large rut to destroying a group of people.  It’s important to learn from people who have lived the past.

What I’m concerned about is that a part of our population (25%) is being dismissed because they may be labeled “old school”.  In progressive language it might be referred to as ageism (because EVERYthing needs to have an -ism at the end of it) or in more traditional language, it can be just plain old disrespect.  In more traditional cultures around the world, older people are honored, respected and considered to have wisdom.  You don’t have to be well educated or wealthy to have wisdom, you just have to have some life experience. In some cultures, however, if you can’t tweet, snapchat, take selfies or make friends with Alexa and Siri so you don’t have to get up to turn anything on or off, then you’re obviously a relic, behind the times, useless.

Before you, the reader, makes a judgement call about me, you should know that I write my blog on my laptop on a webpage I put together myself (not a very good one yet but I’m working on it!), I tweet, take the occasional selfie and yes, I talk to Alexa and ask her to play Baby Shark to drive everyone crazy.  Oh, and I was born before the Beatles became a thing.  Always being willing to learn is what I believe makes a person ageless.  That said, because of my age and what I’ve learned, both old and new, I have a pretty good repertoire to choose from when making decisions or learning something else new.  And I’ve made my share of mistakes which I hear is ok to do these days because you can learn from those too.  So to lump all people above some imaginary age line and decide they’re old school is at the least inaccurate and at the most,  actually pretty insulting.

So, what to do?  It works both ways.  Yes, it’s easy to say younger people should be learning from me, but the truth is, I tend to learn from them as well.  Sometimes all it takes is building a relationship with a PERSON, regardless of age, listen to them, learn who they are and what they’ve experienced and learn from each other.  Get rid of the labels like Baby Boomers and Millennials with their list of characteristics and just get to know each other as people.  Then we can joke about being old school because maybe after all my experience, I prefer to be old school.