1st Panel in Slovenia: Summary of the lecture prepared for the 1st DANET Meeting “Active Ageing in European Countries”

Dušana Findeisen
Active Ageing in European Policies, Professional Literature and in Our Eyes
CENTER EVROPA, 15^th FEBRUARY 2011

Active ageing  as it is being addressed  in European policies is mostly about working longer beyond the legal retirement age and about bettering working conditions. It is about the concept of lifelong work. Further, it is also about flex security: access to lifelong learning and education, corporate responsibility and more efficient age management in companies. But what about active ageing or activity in old age, theory that started being shaped around the year 1952 arguing that the level of  older people’s satisfaction with life can be correlated to the level of their activity.

The position of older people in the society is socially constructed and their valuable cooperation with younger generations is possible only, if we achieve to have in society plural values. Besides, health, family friends and work, other values more typical of the third age , the post retirement period, should be valued and encouraged: being slow against  being quick (taking time for observing, sharing, transferring knowledge , values, taste onto other generations, having meaningful relationships, putting people first), being weak against being strong and aggressive( when one is weak one is more observant, careful also about the others, tradition( if we know where we come from we start being more cooperative with other generations, understanding ( understanding and appreciating relationships), etc. In work dominated societies older people and other social groups which are not in the mainstream of the society slowly find themselves squeezed out of the society to its edge.

The position of older people could change, if stereotypes about older people were slowly transformed (they are always in  a bad mood, they are expensive, they keep complaining, they are not interested, they do not manage new technologies) and banned.

Active ageing was researched at the Slovenian third Age University. We were interested in our formulations of active ageing and we have discovered that: being active in old age means » being surrounded, progressing in different directions, also in gaining and using knowledge, being able to guide younger generations and others who are in the need of advice, being interested in who we are and where we are headed, being interested in transferring values onto other( younger)  generations and peers. Oddly enough in  ex-socialist countries being active in old age does not mean ( at all) being an active citizen and a lot of education leading towards organised voluntary activities for the benefit of the society would be needed.