Too old for what?

In many ways, I've been lucky in life. In particular, as a white British male, I have rarely experienced any overt form of negative discrimination.

Even when I came to Germany in 1989, I didn't feel discriminated against as a foreigner. OK, my then grandmother-in-law did tell me that she thought there were "far too many foreigners in Munich", but she didn't mean the Brits. "No, that's different," she told me when my ex-wife protested that I, too, was a foreigner.

In fact, as a Brit in Germany, the only discrimination one tends to feel is positive. The Germans, despite the experience of the Second World War, seem to love all things British (except, of course, the weather and the food, both of which are much better than most Germans think).

So, after all this positive experience, it is interesting for me to find myself at last in a group that faces discrimination.

I'm talking here about the over-50s, whose numbers I joined this past January.

Again, some of this discrimination is "positive", or at least meant to be. I receive special offers for holidays for the over-50s, and one cinema in Munich offers cheaper afternoon shows — with coffee and cake, naturally. Just for the hell of it, I am determined to accept this bizarre offer.

More seriously, we know that the over-50s are being hit disproportionately hard by the current job losses (I've been spared so far.) Career planning is therefore a key issue for this age group, and my colleague Margaret Davis will be looking closely at this topic in the next edition of Business Spotlight (on sale in mid-August).

Another thing that caught my eye recently was an education report by the EU that pointed out that Germany's teachers were among the oldest in Europe, with half of them over 50.

My first reaction was "so what?". But when I read on, I discovered that, with so many teachers likely to retire in the next 10 to 15 years, it is essential to make sure that replacements are found.

Another concern is that the high number of older teachers is having a negative effect on the standard of education, because many of these teachers do not use the latest teaching methods.

If that is true — and if these "new methods", whatever they might be, are more effective than the "old" ones — this would indeed be worrying. But, in defence of my new age group, I'd like to make three points:

• Older doesn't necessarily mean less motivated or less technologically interested and able.
• Experience can be a very positive quality, not only in teaching.
• Older employees need to receive training opportunities to keep up to date.