When you are 80...

What Do You Want to Be Doing When You’re 80?

By MICHAEL GONCHAR

When you get to be a certain age, growing older isn’t something you necessarily want to happen — it just happens. But 80 today for many people isn’t the same 80 as it used to be. Some 80-year-olds are still traveling around the world and riding elephants.

What do you want to be doing when you’re 80?

In “This Is What 80 Looks Like,” Gail Collins writes about the American feminist Gloria Steinem turning 80:

On Tuesday, Gloria Steinem turns 80.

Do not bother to call. She’s planning to celebrate in Botswana. “I thought: ‘What do I really want to do on my birthday?’ First, get out of Dodge. Second, ride elephants.”

Very few people have aged as publicly. It’s been four decades since she told a reporter, “This is what 40 looks like.” Back then many women, including Steinem herself, fudged their age when they left their 20s, so it was a pretty revolutionary announcement. A decade later she had a “This is what 50 looks like” party at the Waldorf for the benefit of Ms. Magazine. Steinem, who has frequently said that she expects her funeral to be a fund-raiser, has been using her birthdays to make money for worthy causes ever since. Before heading off to Botswana, she, along with Rabbi Arthur Waskow, was feted at a “This is what 80 looks like” benefit for the Shalom Center in Philadelphia.

Ever the positive thinker, Steinem composed a list of the good things about starting her ninth decade. A dwindling libido, she theorized, can be a terrific advantage: “The brain cells that used to be obsessed are now free for all kinds of great things.”

“I try to tell younger women that, but they don’t believe me,” she said in a pre-Botswana interview. “When I was young I wouldn’t have believed it either.”

Her famous hair is colored, but otherwise, there’s been no outside intervention. She likes to recall a friend who proudly reported having rebutted the feminist-got-a-face-lift rumors by announcing: “I saw Gloria the other day and she looked terrible.”

Actually, she doesn’t look terrible at all. She looks great. She looks exactly the way you would want to imagine Gloria Steinem looking at 80.

NOW YOU GO: Read the entire article, then tell us …

— What do you want to be doing when you’re 80?
— How would you want to look?
— Where would you be living?
— Would you be working at all or completely retired?
— With whom would you be spending your time?

Recess?

Do Kids Need Recess?

By MICHAEL GONCHAR

Recess is one period in the day that many students don’t want to miss. Yet with all the pressures on increasing test scores, schools have cut back on the amount of time that kids get to be kids. Plus, teachers sometimes use recess as a privilege that can be taken away if students don’t behave. Of course, children hate to lose recess — but should the rest of us worry?

Do kids need recess?

In “Students Who Lose Recess Are the Ones Who Need It Most,”Jessica Lahey writes:

Despite overwhelming evidence that periods of unstructured play and social interaction are a crucial part of children’s cognitive, academic, physical and mental wellness, schools continue to take away recess privileges as a penalty for academic or behavioral transgressions. I’ve done it, many times. When students fail to hand in assignments or when a child acts up in class, I’ve taken their recess privileges hostage. I did it both as a way of punishing for bad behavior or as a way to carve out a few extra minutes of learning time in an otherwise packed day.

Unfortunately, I’m not alone. According to a Gallup poll commissioned by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 77 percent of school principals report that they withhold recess as punishment, even as they simultaneously sing the praises of recess as a factor in academic, cognitive, and social development. In that same report, eight in 10 principals acknowledge that time to play has a “positive impact on achievement,” and two-thirds of principals state that “students listen better after recess and are more focused in class.”

In response to this common disciplinary practice, as well as the overall declining rates and duration of recess in this country, the American Academy of Pediatrics recently issued a policy statement, “The Crucial Role of Recess,” to set the record straight and make recommendations to schools. Their stance is unequivocal: “recess offers cognitive, social, emotional, and physical benefits that may not be fully appreciated when a decision is made to diminish it.” In other words, schools should keep recess on the schedule, and teachers like me shouldn’t take it away.

NOW YOU GO: Read the entire article, then tell us …

— Do kids need recess? Why?

— Is recess just for elementary school students, or should students in middle school — or even high school — have some form of recess or unstructured time? Do you still have recess?

— How important was recess in your schooling? What did you do during recess? Was it beneficial for you?

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How Much Control Do You Think You Have Over Your Fate?

By MICHAEL GONCHAR

We like to think that we have control over our destinies. But what if our fate was determined by our ancestors hundreds of years ago?

How much control do you think you have over your fate?

In “Your Ancestors, Your Fate,” Gregory Clark makes the case that our lineage has more influence on our life’s trajectory than we might think — or be comfortable with:

Inequality of income and wealth has risen in America since the 1970s, yet a large-scale research study recently found that social mobility hadn’t changed much during that time. How can that be?

The study, by researchers at Harvard and Berkeley, tells only part of the story. It may be true that mobility hasn’t slowed — but, more to the point, mobility has always been slow.

When you look across centuries, and at social status broadly measured — not just income and wealth, but also occupation, education and longevity — social mobility is much slower than many of us believe, or want to believe. This is true in Sweden, a social welfare state; England, where industrial capitalism was born; the United States, one of the most heterogeneous societies in history; and India, a fairly new democracy hobbled by the legacy of caste. Capitalism has not led to pervasive, rapid mobility. Nor have democratization, mass public education, the decline of nepotism, redistributive taxation, the emancipation of women, or even, as in China, socialist revolution.

To a striking extent, your overall life chances can be predicted not just from your parents’ status but also from your great-great-great-grandparents’. The recent study suggests that 10 percent of variation in income can be predicted based on your parents’ earnings. In contrast, my colleagues and I estimate that 50 to 60 percent of variation in overall status is determined by your lineage. The fortunes of high-status families inexorably fall, and those of low-status families rise, toward the average — what social scientists call “regression to the mean” — but the process can take 10 to 15 generations (300 to 450 years), much longer than most social scientists have estimated in the past.

NOW YOU GO: Read the entire article, then tell us…

— How much control do you think you have over your fate?

— Do you feel your fate is already predetermined by your lineage — your parents and ancestors? Or do you feel you are in the driver’s seat in determining your own success?

— Do you think you will be better or worse off than your parents? In what ways? Why?

— The author makes the argument that “the compulsion to strive, the talent to prosper and the ability to overcome failure are strongly inherited.” Do you think you inherited these qualities? Or do you think you had to develop them on your own?

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