The Millennium - stereotyping of both elderly people and young students
Watch this postI missed so much education when I was young as I had to start work in a flour mill at the age of 14 when my school and home were bombed during WW2. After a lifetime of work and caring I was at long last able to take up studies in my 70s. Then I became Age Concern Cymru's senior learner of the year in 2000 after my autistic son and I had studied information technology at a local college. My son named me MillenniMum and BBC local radio ‘phoned me to appear on their morning programme. When my son and I arrived at their studio it was obvious from their facial expressions that I was not what they expected. I felt I ought to dash home, have a blue rinse and a perm, and put on pearls and a skirt and cardigan (if I had possessed them) as I was wearing my usual jeans, zip-up gilet and trainers. I realised they had already decided what their hoped-for dear old lady was going to say in the interview. The well-known BBC interviewer was very pleasant, but I soon felt that I was being channelled into what I was supposed to say. That had the opposite effect so, for instance, when he asked me what I thought about computers, I could not help saying, ‘Well you know how the saying goes – to err is human, but to really bugger it up you really need a computer’. Although he seemed taken aback at first, at the end of the interview he laughed and said 'Thank you Cyberwrinkly', the name I told him I used on the Web. On the way out of the young lady sound engineer looked stunned and asked 'Did you really say that on air?'
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