I've worked in several very large companies where they had that attitude toward learning anything new. Thankfully, in order to remain efficient and competitive, they opened up and then realized it wasn't nearly as difficult or as expensive as they'd expected--in fact, we've been proving it to be a particularly impression advantage to be open to things we're not used to and giving them a chance sometimes.

If you're going to use seniority and age as a reason not to be lectured to, certainly you must have the wisdom and experience to also open yourself up to possibly being proven wrong and shown something new and better without the barriers put up by such excuses as 'this is what I know'. I doubt you'll have such a limitation once you've had your 'Ahha!' moment in something new.