Adam Rustowski, Ph.D.

...it is important for the older generation to find some common ground, to communicate their experience, it is not enough for us to say "Look, we have all this experience, why don't you turn to us?"

Interview conducted by: Damien Fisher on 30 July 1997

Q: This is Damien Fisher, and I'm here with Dr. Adam Rustowski, who is a teacher at Canberra Grammar School, in Canberra, Australia, and I'm interviewing him for the Witness to History section for the Thinkquest 97 competition. Dr. Rustowski, good morning.
A: Good morning.
Q: Good afternoon, actually.
A: Good afternoon, as the case may be.
Q: First off, can you just give a quick biography?
A: It is very difficult to cover 50 years of one's life really, but in a nutshell, the eventful first 40 years followed by an uneventful 15 years (or 14, close to that). The caesura in between of course was the migration process which took me from Warsaw, Poland, in 1981 through the refugees resettlement process in Austria, directly to Australia. The first 40 years or so (38 to be exact) were dominated by the system prevailing at the time in Central Europe, communism, and the dramatic struggle of the people to overthrow the yoke of the system, which culminated in the collapse of the system in 1989, but in 1981 when the decisions were being made about immigration no one could have possibly foreseen that the system would implode and collapse, ultimately ending the period of the cold war and the struggle of the people to free themselves from the domination of others. The UN, the resettlement in Australia, but there is not much to tell, except my family and I found a strange country at the other end of the world with a strange language and strange customs, with incomprehensible human attitudes, and it took us some time to make sure that we could communicate, we desperately wanted to communicate with other people, and that we could not only communicate our needs and desires and wishes but also understand the wishes and desires of those that so generously accepted us into their midst. It was extremely important for us to find out quickly and efficiently how we should present ourselves so we could be considered as soon as possible, and very earnestly, as Australians and the history of this struggle is the history of the struggle to become Australians, and to forget about the old ways, old habits of thinking, took us about the remaining 14 years and it will take us another 14 or 20 until we have to go. But ultimately this is how I see my life in those two halves with the intervening period in Austria which was in itself an interesting experience. The struggle against communism which involved both active and passive opposition involved illegal, clandestine, and very often rather dangerous arrangements that were, so we hoped at the time, to bring down the system. It created a number of thought patterns, behaviors, attitudes that were absolutely useless in the new society. We had to get rid of them.
Q: So, right now, how has your outlook and philosophy in life changed since you left Poland?
A: It has changed in a number of ways. Firstly, this content itself changes and touches humans souls I'm not quite sure in what mystical ways. It's very difficult to articulate and rationalize something that I feel only instinctively, but it has changed me, even if I didn't consciously want to change, I still would have been changed by something this continent does to every single immigrant, that is has done in the past to every single immigrant. Quite apart from this, there were a number of things that I brought with me, from Warsaw, from Poland, that I didn't want to continue, and a number of behaviors and attitudes that I thought did not fit into the new environment and had to be discarded. They had to be replaced by something else, something that I would have observed and absorbed from my own new environment, and that certainly was a long process, sometimes painful, but more often than not rather inspirational because it opened new vistas, new ways of thinking, new views and ways of responding to things unknown and I took at the time and I still am taking quite a lot of encouragement from those people around me who help me a lot.
Q: Our entry in the competition involves the elderly, and intergenerational learning so on that topic, what are the differences in the attitudes towards the elderly in Warsaw and Canberra?
A: I guess it's largely cultural, really, but it also is generational, so those two things superimposed create a web of differences, but it is changing in Warsaw, too, after the collapse of communism, Poland began absorbing very quickly those attitudes that at the time and still are prevalent in the West. Consequently, from the patriarchal society, the society dominated by wise old men it is very quickly changing into a society that is very often driven by the energetic and the young. The associated consequences of this are that the older generation is being more now ignored, their needs being ignored, their whole experience is being ignored. Consequently, quite a lot is being lost in the process, the balance is not being kept properly in Poland. Is the balance kept here? I guess in a democratic society with a long history of democratic process and change like Australia ultimately the balance will prevail. I am not in a position to judge now whether the balance is being kept but it will prevail and one would hope it would also prevail in Poland.
Q: So you think it would be wise of young people to take a lesson from the elderly and not just heed them?
A: I think it would be probably even more important for the old generation to find some common ground, to communicate their experience, it is not enough for us to say "Look, we have all this experience, why don't you turn to us?" We have to find a way to communicate with the younger generation. We have to find a way to communicate this experience in a meaningful way, it is not good enough for us to sit back smug in our conviction that we have all the wisdom. The idea is to communicate this wisdom in a meaningful way to those that may have the need for it.
Q: As a final question, what do you think, what are your expectations and hopes and fears for when you get older, you know, 70, 80?
A: My real hope is that I will be able to change in the course of time and adapt to the new ways so that I can maintain effective, productive communication across the generation gap, that's my only hope.
Q: Any fears?
A: Not much for myself, really, I don't really have a doubt, I simply want to live a life that is fulfilled by successful communication with others. If I can do that at the age of 75, 85, who knows?, then I think I will have accomplished something. Thank you very much.
Q: Thank you, Dr Rustowski.