Connecting Generations

Social isolation, loneliness, and suicide are conditions we often associate with the elderly. But in reality, these issues have sharply increased across younger generations. Baby Boomers, Gen X’ers, Millennials, and post-Millennials all report a declining number of friends and an increasing number of health issues associated with loneliness. Even more concerning, it appears that the younger the generation, the greater the feelings of disconnection. Regardless of age, it feels as though we’re living through a period of ongoing disequilibrium because we’re not able to adapt quickly enough to the social and technological changes swirling around us. These powerful changes have not only isolated individuals from their own peers but have contributed to becoming an age-segregated society. And yet we need fulfilling relationships with people our own age and across the generations to lead lives that are rich in meaning and purpose. Even in those rare communities where young and old live near each other, they lack organic settings that encourage intergenerational relationships. In addition, it isn’t technology, but generational diversity that is our best tool for navigating the changes that affect so many aspects of our lives - whether it’s work, entertainment, education, or family dynamics. We can’t restore yesterday’s model of community, where only those who were older transmitted wisdom downward to the generation below. But we can relearn how much members of different generations have to offer each other and recreate intergenerational communities for the 21st century where young, old, and everyone in between is equally valued for their perspectives, and where each generation views itself as having a stake in the other’s success. Here, Hayim Herring focuses more deeply on how Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials perceive one another and looks underneath the generational labels that compound isolation. He offers ways we can prepare current and future generations for a world in which ongoing interactions with people from multiple generations become the norm, and re-experience how enriching intergenerational relationships are personally and communally.

A step-by-step guide on how to develop meaningful intergenerational programs, this user-friendly text provides pre-service and in-service teachers with an understanding of the importance of such programs. The author provides concrete lesson plans that can be used to begin a new program or to be a part of existing curricula.

The founder of Encore.org traces his thirty-year quest to meet the challenges of a society with more older than younger members, sharing insights into longevity, age segregation, and the experiences of remarkable, everyday people.

This book collects selected papers written by invited and plenary speakers of the 15th International Congress on Mathematical Physics (ICMP) in the aftermath of the conference. In extensive review articles and expository texts as well as advanced research articles the world leading experts present the state of the art in modern mathematical physics. New mathematical concepts and ideas are introduced by prominent mathematicalphysicists and mathematicians, covering among others the fields of Dynamical Systems, Operator Algebras, Partial Differential Equations, Probability Theory, Random Matrices, Condensed Matter Physics, Statistical Mechanics, General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Field Theory, Quantum Information and String Theory. All together the contributions in this book give a panoramic view of the latest developments in mathematical physics. They will help readers with a general interest in mathematical physics to get an update on the most recent developments in their field, and give a broad overview on actual and future research directions in this fascinating and rapidly expanding area.

Generations Z in Europe brings together differing geographic perspectives from a range of researchers to present a fascinating picture of the contemporary reality for 'Gen-Z' workers from nine European countries. The findings will help readers understand the diversity of issues and commonalities for this new part of the global workforce.

This volume-"Selected Contemporary Challenges of Aging Policy"-is the most international of all published monographs from the series "Czech-Polish-Slovak Studies in Andragogy and Social Gerontology." Among the scholars trying to grasp the nuances and trends of social policy, there are diverse perspectives, resulting not only from the extensive knowledge of the authors on the systematic approach to the issue of supporting older people but also from the grounds of the represented social gerontology schools. In the texts of Volume VII interesting are both distinct and coherent elements presenting the role of local, regional and global policies in the prism of the countries from which the authors originate: the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, Italy, Turkey, and the United States. The chapters show a wealth of methodological approaches to the perception of social policy and its tools. In the texts there are issues related to the idea of active ageing, discrimination against older people in the workplace, comparability of solutions friendly to employment of older adults in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia as well as focused on the importance of educational forms (universities of the third age, senior clubs, folk high schools, and other non-formal solutions) determining an active life in old age. This monograph also attempted to answer the question regarding how to transfer the idea of intergenerational learning into the realm of practice. This issue complements the chapter on the implementation of intergenerational programs in institutions providing long-term care support. The book also outlines a public policy on ageing in the perspective of the changes over the last few decades (Slovenia) and the case demonstrating solutions to accelerate self-reliance as a key to active ageing (Turkey). We hope that seventh volume of our series will be an intellectual stimulus for further international research on change in social policy and will contribute to the dissemination of best practices as well as contribute to positive social change.

In this work the author moves away from youth-centered catechesis toward a catechetical method that gets at the heart of faith formation for ALL generations, storytelling. In the African-American storytelling tradition, both the storyteller and listener are important—they embody the story. What happens in the story exchange process is the discovery of connections. The author’s method of African-American storytelling, My Story-Your Story, brings to life the Christian story through our shared experiences. Intergenerational catechesis invites us to see ourselves and one another across time—through eyes that are young, middle-aged, and elderly. Based on an understanding of family, intergenerational catechesis moves away from the domestic church as a starting point for growing in faith to the community as a starting point. Where the domestic church focuses on those who live in the household, intergenerational catechesis focuses on everyone in the Church community: single persons, divorced persons, widows/widowers, teens, young adults, pre-school and elementary children, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. In highlighting our connections we are better able to see ourselves and one another differently. When we see ourselves and others transformed faith is revitalized.

In an age criticized for its lack of family cohesion and a growing chasm between old and young, George Strange's Generations: Stories comes to remind us that no amount of Western culture can erase the bonds that unite family and humanity. In unobtrusive prose, Strange moves us through each story to a better understanding of family and the artificial distances we create within them. Each story quietly insists that human themes are no respecter of age and just as each generation must learn, so too must it teach. These stories do not hammer; they transport. Within settings so familiar to many of us, the rural or small town South, Strange refuses to leave us comfortable, carefully twisting our perspective so that we are forced to face the issues in each work. With subtle movements of plot, the audience finds itself looking at both its inevitable future and its youthful past and the issues common to both. Whether it's the younger generation's demand for identity and dignity or the older generation's insistence that it not be marginalized and forgotten, the stories take to task traditional views of generations and their interaction. While a grandfather may teach, as in "Pears" and "If She Should Die, " a father must also learn from his own son, as in "A Gift for George Washington Gonzales.' In "Season of Death" and "Mrs. Dickens Goes to the Drugstore, " older characters struggle against the erosion of time and the irreverence of the young. A community's responsibility and failure to a younger generation is explored in "River Caul" just as a young boy explores the myths of his family's past in "Connecting Generations." What Generations: Stories leaves us with then is the knowledge that thegenerations are neither isolated nor inaccessible amid the sea of human experience. What bridges the differences is a willingness to perceive age as a detail and not an identity and the universal human desire for dignity and acknowledgement. These bridges, the stories tell us, are numerous, available, and fundamental to our continuity as humans.