Yesterday, in Dr. Pruett’s “Sociology of Aging” course, students participated in The Aging Simulation.
The Aging Simulation is meant to help students experience how much of the geriatric population sometimes treated. The students go through six different scenarios, each one facilitating a function that lessens in quality with age: Hearing, Perception of the Elderly, Social Losses, Vision, Mobility, and Memory. Throughout the simulation, students experience a loss in hearing, bunions, social losses, and the perception of being elderly. To experience hearing loss, students are given ear plugs for one or both ears. To experience bunions, students put corn kernels in their shoes for the duration of the simulation. To experience social losses, each student writes down a number of things they care about on cards and when they go through each additional station, they must give up one card so that at the end they only have one card left and they have experienced loss.
To experience the perception of being elderly, they are assigned a name tag with a condescending or degrading name that is sometimes assigned to an older lady or gentleman (ex: “Sweetie” or “Slow”). The final three stations are Vision, Mobility, and Memory. Vision is experienced by wearing goggles that have been modified to facilitate glaucoma or cataracts. Mobility is experienced by wrapping the students’ knee joints with ace bandage and having them climb the stairs while breathing in and out of a straw. Memory is experienced by a facilitator giving the students direct, quick instructions to preform and experiencing the ridicule and shame of not being able to carry out those instructions. This simulation is used to explain to the students that just because someone speaks quickly and confusingly to an older lady or gentleman, that doesn’t necessarily mean it was the person’s age that stopped them from completing the task, it just means the speaker was communicating ineffectively to understand correctly, no matter the person’s age.
At the end of the simulation, the students have a better understanding as to how older ladies and gentlemen feel and leave with an educated understanding on how to help old ladies and gentlemen feel as valued and respected as they should be.