Kirkus Reviews QR Code
MAGGIE KUHN ON AGING by Margaret E. Kuhn

MAGGIE KUHN ON AGING

By

Pub Date: Oct. 10th, 1977
Publisher: Westminster

Dialogue selected from a ""course"" on aging slanted to church policy and practice, whose discussants included students, editor Dieter Hessel of the United Presbyterian Church's Program Agency, and ""Maggie"" Kuhn, warrior of the Grey Panthers. ""We are not wrinkled babies,"" Kuhn insists as she has many times before cameras. Church congregations with many elderly members are certainly not ""dying."" Too much emphasis has been put on ""services for"" the aged rather than action with them; unless all age groups work together for social change and new attitudes toward the aging, mere services ""are really novocaine shots"" which lull but do not cure. Kuhn initiates discussion of such immediate problems as elderly ghettos (slums or ""playpens""), inadequate and dehumanized health care, faltering transportation systems, deteriorating environments. There is a strong focus on church programs to raise the consciousness not only of the elderly (through a Life Review project, for example) but of the entire congregation. Kuhn's championship of the rights and dignity of the aging make this a potentially important lever for change.