Download The way we (should?) live now: research, social policy and lived

The way we (should?) live now: research, social
policy and lived experience in an ageing society
Tilda Gaskell
University of Dundee, Scotland, UK
Paper presented at SCUTREA 34th Annual Conference, University of Sheffield,
UK. 6-8 July 2004
Introduction
The fact that the population is becoming progressively older, that we are experiencing
a relentless demographic shift, is regularly cited in government statistics with varying
degrees of apprehension. Older people are becoming more socially visible and,
whether perceived as a problem or as an economic asset, this social group is forming
a progressively larger proportion of the population with an ever greater influence on
the economy and the democratic process. Projections suggest that the ageing of
society will continue, and that the proportion of the very old will increase. In Britain
this has fuelled fears that rising numbers of people will become dependent on the
state, while at the same time the proportion of the population that is economically
active will fall. As a result the government is keen to find ways to reduce or delay agerelated dependency, and this has resulted in a series of policy initiatives that are
supported by research.
The current labour government has made much of the rhetoric of education and
lifelong learning as a means by which to bring about social change and improvements
in health – an approach which Basil Bernstein has memorably described as ‘the
missionary position of New Labour’ because, he argues, it is not education, but
symbolic control through the creation of a ‘totally pedagogised society’ that is
proposed by lifelong learning (Bernstein, 2001, p.365). The prevention of dependency
is used to justify increased intervention in the management of old age. Education, in
the guise of lifelong learning, has been employed to bring about change as proposed
by policy. Education is a means of informing and changing behaviour (as in health
promotion); of developing skills (for instance computer literacy), and is also seen as a
way of increasing social cohesion through the provision of community based adult
education for older people. This paper will explore the links between government
funded research and the (re)education of older people.
Adult education and social change
Throughout the twentieth century adult education has been assigned to many and
diverse tasks, and has been used as a vehicle for the advancement of shifting social
objectives. These have varied from those that support collective values and
programmes of community and liberal adult education, to those that encourage
individualism and development of the self-steering capacities necessary in a self-help
enterprise culture (Fieldhouse, 1996). The health of individuals and populations has
been a consistent feature. In the early twentieth century educational programmes
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instructed mothers in the arts of hygiene and infant nutrition; today emphasis is given
to the provision of information and training to encourage self-responsible health
behaviours. The English White Paper on Health Saving lives our healthier nation
(Department of Health, 1999) emphasises the provision of ‘health skills’ (which will
‘help people to help themselves and others’) and ‘parenting skills’ - for example Sure
Start for parents and carers of ‘the most disadvantaged children’. Similar programmes
of skills training are proposed for older people. In addition a strategy for developing
‘expert patients’ to ‘help people manage their own illnesses’ through education is
proposed, with older people specifically targeted as those most likely to suffer from
prolonged chronic disease (Department of Health, 1999, p.3). The importance of
linking different areas of policy, such as health, education and environment is
highlighted as a means to achieve change.
In a study commissioned by the 1993 Carnegie Inquiry into the Third Age Schuller
and Bostyn make a clear connection between participation in education and
improvements in health amongst people over fifty (Schuller and Bostyn, 1992). In a
later paper, although they caution against implying a causal link between provision of
educational opportunities and reduction in dependency amongst older people, they
state that while ‘access to adult education may not of itself be sufficient, ... it may play
an extraordinarily cost effective part in preventing or postponing dependency in
various forms’ (Schuller and Bostyn, 1996, p.91). Several reports and other
documents have been published since which link learning with health, and particularly
with health in older age (see, for instance, Dench and Regan, 2000; Carlton and
Soulsby, 1999). Other frequently quoted benefits of engaging in education or learning
in older age are those concerning ‘quality of life’ and social cohesion. It is suggested
that education can contribute to improvements in these spheres which will have a
generally life-enhancing effect and enable people to maintain social and physical
independence where they might otherwise have become reliant on the state.
Over the last five years government funding has been used to initiate and support
cross-disciplinary research into ageing and old age. The findings of research
undertaken as a result of this funding has had, and will continue to have, a marked
effect on social policy; on attitudes towards old age; and on the affective experience
of becoming older in Britain today. Two programmes of research will serve to
illustrate this trend: one of these has learning as its focus (The Centre for Research
on the Wider Benefits of Learning), while the other (The Growing Older Programme)
is primarily concerned with old age.
In 1999, the Department for Education and Skills established a research centre with a
remit to ‘investigate the full range of benefits that learning brings to both the individual
learner and to society as a whole’ (www.learningbenefits.net/home.htm p.1
[23/03/04]). This organisation – The Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of
Learning - is charged with contributing towards what is described as ‘evidence based
policy’. The results of research into social, economic and personal effects of learning
are expected to provide ‘robust evidence about the scale of these effects and the
costed benefits to the public purse’
(www.learningbenefits.net/ResProgPh3summary.htm p.3 [23/03/04]). The Centre has
three areas of research interest: health and well-being of individuals and
communities; social capital and social cohesion; and families and parenting.
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Research so far published supports the view that there is a positive correlation
between education and health in older age (Hammond, 2002). This is both in terms of
current participation and also educational level achieved throughout life. An earlier
study similarly concluded that a range of positive benefits could be attributed to
participation in learning (Dench and Regan, 2000), while Schuller et al (2002) place
particular emphasis on the concept of the ‘sustaining’ effect of education. It is
suggested that continuing to engage with learning, either formally or informally, helps
to maintain health, positive self-esteem and social cohesion, and delays or prevents
declines in personal and community well-being.
In 1999, The Growing Older Programme or GO was established by the Economic
and Social Research Council (ESRC) with the aim of defining the meaning of ‘quality
of life’ as it affects older people, and also investigating ‘how the quality of people’s
lives can be extended’ (Walker, 2000, p.1). Quality of life is explored through twentyfour projects that focus on the definition and measurement of the concept of quality of
life; on inequality; on technology and the built environment; on healthy and productive
ageing; on family and support networks and on activity and participation amongst
older people. Each project has developed a perspective on quality of life, on how it
affects their particular topic area, and has suggested policy implications as a result of
their findings. Only one project concerned itself specifically with learning and
education in older age, however, as the foregoing discussion suggests, the
accomplishment social change, the management of social policy and the construction
of collective social identity is strongly associated with learning and educational
initiatives.
Policy into practice
Social policy affects the everyday life of citizens through restrictions and opportunities
for social action that are the result of the directives, financial, housing, and health
legislation, and the educational programmes sanctioned by governments. Thus social
policy can be said to establish a curriculum for everyday living in that it organises
knowledge about society within a framework that describes ideal and deviant models
of social life. The mandate of social policy is to ameliorate conditions that are to the
detriment of this ideal.
Humes and Bryce (2003) suggest that ‘evidence informed policy’ is predicated on a
positivist belief in the efficacy of systematic research to uncover and explain physical
and social reality. Such an approach they argue obscures underlying ‘powerful
political forces’, and the existence of what Foucault describes as the ‘regimes of truth’
that shape fundamental beliefs about truth and reality in a given society (Foucault
1980, quoted in Humes and Bryce, p.179). Thus evidence based policy effectively
reproduces the political agenda and defines what it is possible to know. The nature of
pedagogic processes, their effect on the shaping of mental structures, and their
influence on cultural production and reproduction is the constant theme of Bernstein’s
theory, and he argues that enactment of social policy has pedagogic implications
whether or not the policy area is directly concerned with education. Bernstein defines
pedagogy as ‘a sustained process whereby somebody(s) acquires new forms or
develops existing forms of conduct, knowledge, practice and criteria from
somebody(s) deemed to be an appropriate provider and evaluator’ (Bernstein, 2000
p.78 [n]). Bernstein’s concept of pedagogy and pedagogic identity provides a means
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through which to explore the relationship between social policy and the construction
of an identity for older people in contemporary Britain.
Pedagogic identity is that part of self-identity which enables a person to locate and
understand their place in the social order; it is an identity that belongs to a given
social group as well as to the individuals within that group. The processes by which
the aims of the state become internalised as pedagogic identity are described by
Bernstein in terms of policy driven curricula reform which transmits the bias and focus
of government in a form that becomes internalised by both transmitters and acquirers
of pedagogic knowledge. A set of positions is constructed that represent the
ideological perspective contained within each pedagogic identity. The most important
of these are presented as contrasting pairs: retrospective and prospective and market
and therapeutic pedagogic identities. Briefly retrospective pedagogic identities sustain
past narratives of social organisation (for example in terms of religious or national
characteristics) while prospective pedagogic identities recontextualise past narratives
in forms that encourage ‘engagement with contemporary change’ (Bernstein, 2000,
p.68). Market pedagogic identities are instrumental and describe the commodification
of knowledge and the internalisation of belief in a knowledge economy. Therapeutic
pedagogic identities, by contrast, develop the notion of a narrative of the self and the
ongoing enterprise of constructing the self as a personal project.
Social policy is translated into lived experience when it shifts from the strategic and
research papers that produce legislation and contribute to debate, into the commonsense cannon of practitioners and recipients. This occurs through the production of
secondary texts including media reports, training manuals, information leaflets and
direct interventions (Rose, 1998). Pedagogic identity is the filter through which policy
can become lived experience as individuals learn to recognise and respond to
sources of pedagogic communication that support a given discourse which becomes
accepted as the natural order of things.
Learning to age
Research into human ageing in the west has produced models based on the concept
of ‘adjustment’ which refers to qualitative values regarding morale and general
measures of life satisfaction (Coleman, 1993). Two models in particular have been
influential in shaping popular understanding of the ageing process, these are the
functionalist models of disengagement and activity theory. Briefly disengagement
theory is based on the belief that individuals begin to withdraw from the mainstream
as they become older, thus preparing themselves and society for the final withdrawal
signified by death. Activity theory, on the other hand, suggests that the management
of old age is best achieved by encouraging the preservation of attitudes and levels of
social engagement associated with middle age. Both are based on a normative model
in which the ability or otherwise of an individual to adjust to the social, physical and
psychological changes associated with ageing can be measured (objectively or
subjectively) as either successful or unsuccessful.
Later research has questioned the original survey used to support disengagement
theory, and activity theory has also been strongly criticised as idealistic and culturally
biased (Blaikie, 1999). Nevertheless these two models have become dominant in the
west, and the latter model, activity theory, is favoured in policy-making and in
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research. Dominant models ‘limit the kinds of questions [that can be asked] and the
forms of discourse within which insights may be expressed’ by research (Humes and
Bryce, 2003, p.179) and may thus become self-perpetuating.
The theme of successful and less successful ageing is repeated in much of the
literature although it appears in a number of different guises: for instance ‘positive
ageing’, ‘ageing well’ and ‘active ageing’ versus negative and passive responses to
ageing. Throughout this body of work there is an implied set of values that presents
active as good and passive as bad. Peace et al. (1994 p.109) ask ‘[A]re we
dominated by a western perspective where “activity” is a sort of fetish of our time and
culture, a culture in which secular values have largely replaced religious and spiritual
ones?’ Thus, in terms of the secularisation of society, activity theory can be seen as
a successor to the western (protestant) work-ethic which constructs work and activity
(including education) as morally good, and idleness as wicked or at least dangerous.
Models of successful ageing based on continued social engagement and the
semblance of perpetual middle age have had considerable influence on policy and
practice in the fields of social and health care, and also in relation to the provision and
practice of education for older people. Education for older people is thus represented
as a good in itself, promoted variously as socially functional, or as a desirable
commodity which can be purchased.
Following Bernstein, I suggest two different models for the construction of pedagogic
identity in older age, both of which sustain a socially desirable model of ageing as
self-reliant and self-fulfilled. I have named these the pedagogic identities of selfactualisation and self-maintenance. Both identities are defined as prospective
pedagogic identities in that they project an identity which utilises the past as a
resource for making sense of the present. The pedagogic identity of self-actualisation
tends towards a psychologised model of ageing as part of a continuum of
development, representing older age as a period of opportunity. By contrast, the
pedagogic identity of self-maintenance derives from a medicalised model in which
ageing is represented as a period of decline that can be alleviated through the
adoption of appropriate actions and attitudes. I have described these pedagogic
identities as separate from one another for clarity, but it should be emphasised that
they often overlap, and of necessity incorporate other, possibly earlier, pedagogic
identities. For instance research into links between adult learning, improved selfesteem and physical health suggests that self-actualisation supports selfmaintenance (Dench and Regan, 2000). Both identities serve to uphold a model of
citizenship that is at once autonomous and responsible, reflecting the shift towards an
individualised enterprise culture that began in the late twentieth century.
Research carried out for the Wider benefits of learning centre emphasises the value
of education in the prevention or amelioration of ill-health and cites ‘initiatives such as
Prescriptions for Learning [which] point the way to creative collaboration between
education and health services’ (Schuller et al, 2002, p.5). In Prescribing Learning
James makes the case for linking education and health in terms of the previously
cited White Paper Saving Lives: our healthier nation (Department of Health, 1999),
and also in terms of research that links low levels of educational achievement and
participation with poor health. She describes a series of schemes which use learning
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as an aid to the recovery or maintenance of good health, and suggests that the
government’s aim of improving the health of individuals and communities can met by
working with marginalised groups, providing opportunities for social contact and
‘engaging them in a dialogue about their health and learning needs, which is dynamic
and empowering’ (James, 2001, pp.14-15). In this vision learning is promoted as an
unquestioned good, and government aims are similarly unquestioned. This raises the
possibility that ‘the fact that individuals are treated as though they can acquire and
understand the implications of new information about their well-being becomes ... a
justification for reducing the resources that are made available through public
services’ (Field, 2000, p.111, original emphasis).
The construction of the pedagogic identity of self-maintenance can be observed in
health promotion materials such as those which provide information and advice on
diet, activity levels and the eradication of undesirable health behaviours.
Considerable emphasis is currently being given to health education and health
promotion campaigns which routinely make judgements placing moral value on the
actions of individuals: increasingly a healthy life is perceived as virtuous life.
Meanwhile persisting in behaviour deemed unhealthy, such as smoking or being fat,
is to be personally and socially irresponsible. By linking health to virtue, death and
disease have become the ‘wages of sin [and] medicine has become a quasi-religious
crusade against the sins of the flesh’ (Fitzpatrick, 2001, p.6). Fitzpatrick argues that
the whole concept of preventative medicine is in fact flawed because eventual death
cannot be prevented – only postponed. Older people are at a particular disadvantage
in a medicalised world that equates death with failure.
The pedagogic identity of self-actualisation encourages the adoption of a positive
outlook, and activities that support personal development, social cohesion, group
identity and networking. As commercial enterprises become aware of the huge
number of potential customers there is a growing niche market for education, travel,
social activities and magazines for older consumers. Government policy encourages
close working between different departments, and some of this work focuses on selfactualising activities, especially in relation to information technology. In an
imaginative example the Scottish Arts Council initiated a project which provided
experience of, and training in digital art forms; as a result several participants enrolled
in computing classes at the local library (Scottish Arts Council, 2002). The concept of
‘challenge’ is often invoked to support a self-actualising approach; for example The
Discovery Award Association, modelled on the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme,
presents images of challenge, achievement and adventure appropriate and desirable
for older people:
Over fifty? Take up the challenge. More and more people are accepting the
challenge – an exciting and rewarding adventure for anyone aged fifty or over,
regardless of state of health or even disability ... The challenge is to discover: new
strengths and hidden talents, new interests, new life in old interests, new and
interesting people, the satisfaction of doing something for others as well as
yourself, the joy of unexpected achievement. (Discovery Award leaflet, undated)
The style of this example is typical of contemporary constructions of successful
ageing: to age successfully is to be visible and active; what then is the outlook for the
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inactive, the very old and the poor? These hidden people form an underclass within a
group, which for all the rhetoric, is in fact at the margins of our youth-obsessed
culture. Research that links education and learning to positive health outcomes
defines old age as a deficit condition and has the effect of directing policy towards
instrumental, outcomes focussed provision which further exaggerates the gap
between the ‘two nations’ of old age identified by Titmus fifty years ago (Titmus 1955,
quoted in Phillipson, 1998, p.68).
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