ABSTRACT
As I opened the first day of class, I could sense the apprehension in the air, both my own and the students’, even if it was 8:30 in the morning in the middle of winter. I casually asked the students why they chose to take this introduction to gerontology class. Of the nearly fifty students, not one had taken the class as an elective. As the semester continued, it was clear that many students, like society at large, were apprehensive talking about growing old. I conducted an informal survey and discovered many of the students were deathly afraid of the possibility of memory loss, dependence, isolation, and death itself. I can remember my own fear as I watched my grandmother struggle, along with the rest of our family, to cope with her decline due to Alzheimer’s disease. I can remember wondering if all old people suffered this way. Such negative stereotypic views of aging are referred to in the literature as ageism (Eisdorfer, 1983; Walsh, 1999), a type of prejudice that must be challenged in order to provide competent treatment for older adults and their families.
