This book is one of Russell House Publishing’s Theory into Practice series, aimed at a variety of helping professions, and it is designed to lay out the theoretical framework about ageism, and then go on to cover implications for practice. The back cover says that it explains how ageism comes about, how it can be avoided and how it can be challenged. It does all these things, and goes through its material simply and straightforwardly.
The reason for including this review in Children Webmag is that, while most people might think of ageism as discrimination against old people, the word in itself is neutral in that it refers to discrimination against anyone on grounds of their age. Indeed, the book makes the point that children and young people may lose out on age grounds at times, and quite a number of the practice examples given in the book refer to children and young people.
The book has a few pages of references and a list of contacts for further work on discrimination against children and young people. For anyone interested in this subject, it is a useful starter.
Please comment on my concern re: the city owned and operated swim pool excluding a 7 yo from “tot time” (thru age 6) 5-7 pm, offering “open rec” from 7-8:45 pm. Since she goes to public school at 8 am and requires 11 hrs of sleep, this effectively limits her to only weekend swim. To me, this is like providing weeekday pool time to 40 yo only at midnight. Should I accept this, or demand that they re-work the schedule to provide an appropriate weekday time for 7-9 yo to swim? I know this is not on par with equal access to housing or medical care, but it is important to us. Thanks loads, Grandma
I have had a similar problem with a University Pool facility where, by her statement, an attendant requested that I remove my 6 y/o son from a swimming lane although I was swimming directly behind him. The attendant stated that the roped lanes were not suited to ”kids” and I should take my son into the open part of the pool. She said this although my son was swimming his 2nd consecutive length and an adult had decided to rest at the shallow end of the specific lane for over 12 minutes. For the record the same pool was where my son took his ‘duckling’ lessons, gained his first 2 badges and swam his first unaided length over four months ago. He did his first consecutive 2 lengths without problems over 3 weeks ago in the same laned area of the same pool without problem.