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ERIC Number: ED530324
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2008-Jun
Pages: 55
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Teaching Social Insurance in Higher Education. Occasional Papers. Number 6
Estes, Carroll L.; Grossman, Brian R.; Rogne, Leah; Hollister, Brooke; Solway, Erica
AARP
The ongoing debates about the future of social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare raise questions about the public's knowledge of the history of social insurance and about the impact these programs have on millions of Americans. In general, public conversations about social policies in the U.S. tend to focus on whether or not the nation can afford entitlements to social insurance rather than on the adequacy of benefits or on program improvements. Many American youth believe that Social Security will not be there for them when they grow older, a stark indicator that young people are not exposed to accurate information about the future of the program. The prevalence of this false belief about America's "most beloved" social insurance program raises questions about whether and to what extent students are exposed to information about social insurance and, consequently, how prepared they are to understand its effects on their security in later life. As an intergenerational collective of educators in and students of gerontology, the authors recognize the transformative power of education to provide students of all ages access to knowledge that allows them to more actively engage in their communities. They believe that teaching social insurance is integral to the mission of institutions of higher education to prepare students for participation in the political, civic, and economic realms of social life. Consequently, they designed two complementary research projects to assess the frequency and content of teaching social insurance in college-level, aging-related courses: the first was a survey of gerontology faculty in California and Minnesota and the second was a series of key informant interviews with noted authors from the field of gerontology who have published widely on social insurance and/or teaching social insurance education. Consequently, in the study and the presentation of the results that is provided here, they focused primarily on teaching social insurance within those classes that can be broadly described as "aging courses." In this paper, they use the results of both of these studies to argue that faculty who teach age related courses, and presumably faculty in other disciplines, need more awareness of and greater access to existing resources on teaching social insurance. A bibliography is included. (Contains 3 footnotes.) [This report was supported by AARP's Office of Academic Affairs and Community Partners.]
AARP. 601 E Street NW, Washington, DC 20049. Tel: 888-687-2277; Tel: 202-434-3525; e-mail: member@aarp.org; Web site: http://www.aarp.org
Publication Type: Reports - Research
Education Level: Adult Education; Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Retirement Research Foundation.
Authoring Institution: AARP
Identifiers - Location: California; Minnesota; United States
Identifiers - Laws, Policies, & Programs: Social Security
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A