A brief comment is in order about the title of this article, if only to note and explain why we will have relatively little to say about aging. A basic hypothesis in our approach is that one's relationship to work is one of the important determinants of how present and future time is experienced, that is, one's sense of the passage of time. This sense of the passage of time inevitably shapes and becomes one's psychological sense of aging. It follows that there should be no significant correlation between the psychological sense of aging and biological processes, although at some point they become intertwined. When we use such words as aging or the aged, we usually implicitly assume that the awareness of aging begins at or after midlife. When we see in ourselves or others the visible signs of biological aging, it takes no particular psychological wisdom to assume that they have psychological correlates. In our culture, at least, we do not think of people as aging or aged until we literally see the visible signs of biological aging. We are not accustomed to thinking of the psychological sense of aging in developmental terms, as an internal set of attitudes shaped by experiences of various kinds in a culture suffused with reminders of the passage of time-reminders that almost always are wittingly or unwittingly calculated to make us view that passage in dysphoric terms. But once it becomes obvious that the psychological sense of aging has its developmental roots in our experience of the passage of time-once we unlearn the habit of thinking in terms of a high correlation between the psychological sense of aging and chronological age-we can direct our attention to those things that influence the content and vicissitudes of the experience of the passage of time and, therefore, the emerging sense of aging. And one of these important factors is one's experiences in the world of work: how one plans for, enters, and experiences work. This is one factor, but it is very complicated, related as it is to the major dimensions by which our society is organized, for example, economic, class, sex, education, the family unit, religion, race, etc. In this article, therefore, we restrict ourselves to some of the considerations directing our exploratory studies.
Educational Implications
It is not because we are optimists, or believers in progress and the inevitability of "good" winning out over "bad," or because we have any sense of security in weighing the significances of diverse social trends that we shall note and discuss some recent suggestions and developments. Within several months of each other there appeared two publications. One was Youth: Transition to Adulthood, a report of the Panel on Youth of the President's Science Advisory Committee (1973). A major recommendation in this report is that in the high school years, work and school should be coequal experiences, that is, that work should not be an after-school or summer experience. During these years the world of work can be as productive of knowledge, factual and conceptual, as sitting in a classroom. What is noteworthy about this recommendation is that it is meant to apply to all students and not only, as in the past, to those destined to be blue or white collar workers. This recommendation, of course, makes no sense unless it reflects the fact that high school students are massively indifferent to their school experiences-a conclusion well documented by Buxton (1973)-as well as the conclusion that work has become problematic for all segments of society. The second publication was Scholarship in Society, a Report on Emerging Roles and Responsibilities of Graduate Education in America (1973). One of its recommendations for graduate education is no different than what was recommended for high school students, with the additional suggestion that graduate education be made far easier than it now is for those able only to go part-time. And then Boyer (1974), as Chancellor of the State University of New York, has vigorously supported lifelong education and flexibility in educational programming.
What is significant about all these recommendations is not their newness (they are not all that new) but who is presenting them. In each instance they are either policy makers or people in positions of influencing educational policy. When these kinds of people are calling for a realignment between the world of work and school, it is safe to assume that they are reflecting widespread dissatisfaction with both worlds for all segments of society.
We have no quarrel with these suggestions except in one respect. The major thrust of these suggestions implicitly assumes or does not explicitly question that people should choose a single career or that people are and in the future will continue to be satisfied with one career. The problem these suggestions attack is how to help people make this choice on grounds of more varied experiences in the world of work. One must applaud any suggestion that would make it easier for people of all ages to avail themselves of more education, be it for sheer intellectual pleasure or refinement of existing skills. But if, as we think it increasingly to be the case, people will seek career changes both small and great in degree, then the suggestions above do not get to the heart of the matter. And the heart of the matter, like the structure of the atom, is fantastically complex. After all, we are dealing with attitudes and practices deeply ingrained in our culture and reflected in the substance and structure of education, of our economic system, and of the family. We have said that important changes may be taking place in regards to the concept of the single career and we are now emphasizing the obstacles such changes must encounter. For example, if one looks at children's books-those used in or out of schools-it quickly becomes obvious how directly or indirectly we instill in children the idea of a single career. And if one looks at the "career messages" students receive in high school, it is also obvious that students are asked to think in terms of a single career. It used to be that the college-bound student was expected to choose a single college in which, of course, he would spend four years. This is no longer true. Unlike the past when the student who wanted to transfer was made to feel atypical and it was extraordinarily difficult for him to be admitted elsewhere, we now view it more positively and indeed encourage it. It also used to be that the college student who wanted to take a year off, almost regardless of reason, would encounter administrative rules, regulations, and attitudes that seemed based on two assumptions: It should be made difficult for the student, and his motivations should be suspect unless he clearly could prove otherwise. Despite these and similar changes and their implications, the thrust and structure of the college years are to help the student make a life-enduring choice. That this "help" is increasingly experienced by the student as untimely and unreasoned pressure, stemming from the fear of making the wrong decision among a welter of possibilities, either goes unrecognized or is interpreted as a reluctance to face up to the realities of life. "They are afraid to grow up"-and indeed many are-but it would be the most ludicrous form of psychologi-zing to explain the fear exclusively in intra-psychic terms.
If we are correct in our assessment, the concept of lifelong education must deal directly with two questions: How do we prepare children of all ages for thinking about and planning for more than one career? How do we begin to make it more possible for people to change careers without indulging dilettantism and requiring a self-defeating degree of sacrifice? The second question is the more thorny of the two because it so obviously brings to the fore the economic structure of marriage, business, industry, professional work, and education itself. It would be inappropriate for us in this article either to anticipate the many problems that would arise or to attempt to outline schemes by which they could be dealt with. The immediate task has been to suggest that the change process has already begun because the nature of work in our society has made many people dissatisfied and has forced some to actively seek a change. We are not talking about something that may happen but about something that is happening, and we have chosen to emphasize the potential significances of it among the highly educated who will represent an increasing segment of our population.
Ours is a society that prides itself on the ever-expanding opportunities that education provides to more and more segments of the population. These opportunities create and reinforce risking expectations about what to expect over the life span, not only in a material sense but also in terms of level of personal satisfaction. It is our belief that for some time the highly educated, professional person has been aware of a discrepancy between what he expected and what he experiences in his work, and that the younger people of today anxiously sense that this is what is in store for them and they have difficulty thinking about a future that will deny expression to their needs, talents, and interests. Young people ordinarily do not worry about aging in its conventional sense, and they do not have a long future perspective. But what many of them do have is a heightened sensitivity to the worthwhile-ness of how they are "filling in" and will fill in time, and it is our suggestion that how that sensitivity continues to develop is fateful for when and how they become aware of aging in its more conventional sense. Intuitively and inchoately they know that their relationship to their work will be a major factor in their experience of worthwhile-ness. Their intuitions have a basis in a reality that justifies a dysphoric wariness.
