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The Rural Voice, 1998-10, Page 8Get A Grip this FALL With our best price on this superior Light Truck traction tire. Goodyear Workhorse EXT. Grip Prices valid until October 31, 1998 Sire Ply Price 225/75/R 16 235/85/R 16 245/75/R16 265/75/R 16 8 10 8 8 $150.00 $150.00 $170.00 $170.00 Installed Balance Extra CaII Today For Sizes ! Get It At McArthur Tire HANOVER 364-2661 Toll Free 1-800-299-0436 Owen Sound 376-3520 Toll Free 1-800-265-3101 GOODYEAR .#1 LK 7e e.1 4 THE RURAL VOICE Keith Roulston The lessons we teach our kids So the kids are back in school and mothers breathe a sigh of relief, even if fathers miss the extra hands to help out around the farm. The students will learn a lot of new things in the next few months — some good from the teachers, some bad from the schoolyard. In fact most parents will be upset that the lessons they've tried to impart to their children are undermined by the bad habits they pick up from others at school. Kids learn words parents would rather not have in their vocabulary, they get sex educa- tion lessons we may not be happy to have them learn and they may be pressured into bad habits like smoking that we'd like to protect them from. And we have no way of controlling it. But do we ever look at the hidden messages we send our children in our own behavior at home? If we saw others pass on the attitudes we often secretly signal, we might be appalled. For instance, nearly every farm family teaches a disrespect for the dangers of farm life from early in a child's life. We like to include children in the farm's activities by putting them in our lap in the tractor (hopefully with a cab, at least) or even the lawn mower seat. Later the kids graduate to riding the fender of the tractor, even while hauling dangerous equipment. Farm safety advocates try to change our way of thinking but the message that we're sending to kids is that concerns about safety are silly. Before long the kids are sent out on the road whether with tractors and wagons or all -terrain vehicles. We know the law says that no one younger than 16 is supposed to be on the roads with a motorized vehicle but what the heck — the law is for someone else. It's okay to break the law unless you get caught. Similar silent messages about the meaninglessness of the law arc sent by parents who let their kids drive cars and pickups on the back roads before they have a licence, by adults who drive the backroads with a beer bottle nestled on the scat between their legs, by parents who ignore speed limits on highways and by those who ignore or ridicule the use of seat belts. I don't know, maybe this is just preparing kids for the modern world. Two teenagers I know who recently took their driver's education were told by their instructors that it was more important to be going the same speed as the rest of the traffic on the road (no matter how insane that was), than to obey the speed limit. Maybe we don't want a society in which people respect the law, in which we think that perhaps a law was created for a reason. Certainly that's the message today's adults are sending to young people. We arc sending a message that laws arc to be loosely interpreted according to our own needs and desires. If we don't like a law, if it gets in the way of our short-term goals, then we're quite free to ignore it. We may even curse the law enforcement official, when he catches us breaking the speed limit. And yet many of the same people who think the law should be flexible when it comes to their own behavior, become furious when they feel the law isn't strict enough in areas they'd like to control. There has been a cam- paign to reform the Young Offenders Act because we feel it's not tough enough on young trouble makers. We also seem to feel that harsh penalties will act as a deterrent to crime. A large part of the population supports putting more and more people in jail and keeping them there. They feel that letting people out before their sentence is completed sends the wrong signal. The question is, how can socic:y counteract the bad lessons kids learn at home from the most influential people in their lives: their parents?0 Keith Roulston is editor and publisher of The Rural Voice. .1le lives near Blyth, ON.