Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Research

This post is part of TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from people in the TED community.

Old School is a clearinghouse of free and carefully vetted resources to educate people about ageism and help dismantle it. Our goal is to help catalyze a movement to make ageism (discrimination on the basis of age) as unacceptable as any other kind of prejudice.

Old School is an ongoing, interdisciplinary collaboration that will only reach its potential with help from the pro-aging community. This means you! If you have an ageism-related resource to contribute to Old School – not about positive aging or productive aging or healthy aging or conscious aging or creative aging, but explicitly focused on ageism – please use this form to get in touch.

People are happiest at the beginnings and the ends of their lives. Only 2.5% of Americans over 65 live in nursing homes. Older people enjoy better mental health than the young or middle-aged. Dementia rates are falling, fast. So how come so many of us unthinkingly assume that depression, diapers, and dementia lie ahead? That the 20th century’s astonishing leap in life expectancy is a disaster-in-the making? Underlying all the hand-wringing is ageism: discrimination that sidelines and silences older people. So I’ve written a book. I blog about it. I led the team that developed Old School, a clearinghouse of anti-ageism resources. I am the voice of Yo, Is This Ageist? (Go ahead, ask me.) I’ve written a consciousness-raising booklet. And I speak widely. All tools to help catalyze a movement to make discrimination on the basis of age as unacceptable as any other kind.
-From author, Ashton Applewhite