What is the purpose of Professor McKay’s report?

Interviewer: Today with Professor MeKay on our morning talk show. Good morning, Professor McKay.
Professor McKay: Good morning.
Interviewer: I’ve heard that you and your team have just completed a report on old age.
Professor McKay: That’s right.
Interviewer: Could you tell me what your report is about?
Professor McKay’ Well, the report basically looks into the very beliefs that people hold about old age and try to verify them. Interviewer: And what do you think your report can achieve?
Professor McKay: We hope that it would somehow help people to change their feelings about old age, the problem is that far too many of us believe that most old people are poor, lonely and unhappy. As a result we tend to rind old people as a group unattractive, and this is very dangerous for our society.
Interviewer: But surely we cannot escape the fact that many old people are lonely and many are sick.
Professor McKay: No, we can’t. But we must also remember that the proportion of such people is no greater among the 60 to 70 age group than among the 50 to 60 age group.
Interviewer: In other words, there’s no more mental illness, for example, among the 60s to 70s than among the 50s to 60s.
Professor McKay: Right, and why should there be? Why should we expect people to suddenly change when they reach their 60th or 65th birthday any more than they did when they reached their 21st?
Interviewer: But one would expect there’d be more physical illness among old people, surely.
Professor McKay: Why should one expect this? After all, those people who reach the age of 65 or 70 are the strongest among us. The weakest are mainly in childhood, then in their forties or riffles. Furthermore, by the time people reach 60 or 65, they have learned how to look after themselves. They keep warm, sleep regular hours and eat sensibly. Of course, some old people do suffer from physical illnesses, but these do not suddenly develop on their 656 birthday. People who are healthy in middle age tend to be healthy in old age, just as one would expect.
Interviewer: Do you find that young people these days are not as concerned about their parents as their parents were about theirs?
Professor McKay: We have found nothing that suggests that family feeling is either dying or dead. There does not appear to be large numbers of young people who are trying, for example, to have their dear old mother locked up in a mental hospital.
Interviewer: But don’t many parents live apart from their married children than used to be the case?
Professor McKay: True, but this is because many more young families cannot afford to own their own homes these days than ever before. In other words, parents find their married children usually live in separate household because they prefer it that way, not because their children refuse to have their mum and dad living with them.
Interviewer: Is this a good thing, do you think?
Professor McKay: I think it’s an excellent arrangement. We all like to keep our lives private, even from those we love dearly. I certainly don’t think that it’s fine to increase loneliness in old age.
Interviewer: Are people’s mental abilities affected by old age?
Professor McKay: Certain changes do take place as we grow older, but this happens throughout life. These changes are very gradual, and happen at different time with different people. But in general, if you know a person well in his little age, and have seen how he deals with events and problems, you would easily recognize him in old age.
Interviewer: So that someone who enjoys new experiences--travel, education, and so on in his little years will usually continue to do so into old age?
Professor McKay: Exactly. We have carried out some very interesting experiments, in which a group of people aged 60 to 70 and a group aged 30 to 40 have to learn the same things. The first thing we discovered was that the young group tends to be quicker at learning than the old group. However, although the old group took longer to learn, eventually they performed as well as the young group. And when we tested the two groups several weeks later, there was again no difference between the two groups.
Interviewer: That is very interesting indeed. What else did your experiment show?.
Professor McKay: Well, one group of old people agreed to attend evening classes for a year to study English and mathematics. In fact, most of this group became so interested in their studies that they continued them for another year. Anyway, we discovered that they did best in their English classes and that most of them steadily improved their ability to communicate in both written and spoken language.
Interviewer: What about the group who studied mathematics?
Professor McKay: Well, that’s a different story. There seems to be no doubt that people find maths more difficult as they grow older. Though why is it so, I cannot say.
Interviewer: Perhaps the pocket calculators will solve this problem.
Professor McKay: I think you’re fight. In fact, I am sure that you are.
Interviewer: Ok, turn for Commercial. Stay tune. We’ll be right back.