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The Rural Voice, 2000-09, Page 10101 GREAT LAKES FOREST • PRODUCTS Buy ' Sell • Transport of Standing Timber, Logs & Lumber * FREE ESTIMATES * ALL WOODLOTS PAID IN FULL BEFORE LOGGING BEGINS (519) 482-9762 Jake or Bob Hovius 142 Maple St., Clinton, Ont. NOM 1L0 "Our Money... Grows on Trees" MARQUARDT FARM DRAINAGE LTD. (ESTABLISHED 1968) .SPECIALIZING IN: * Farm Drainage * Municipal Drainage * Excavator Work " Dozer Work * Erosion Control * Backhoe Work with Laser %I'F- OFFER: • Personal evaluation of your project • Detailed plans and design work • State-of-the-art equipment • FREE ESTIMATES • Qualified and experienced personnel • Guaranteed workmanship & customer service For Aral pernonal much, pride in wurAmanship. experience and FREE ESTI %I.11F. S call MARQUARDT FARM DRAINAGE LTD. (ESTABLISHED 1968) R . •3 STEVE CRONSBERRY Palmerston. Ontario We install OFFICE 343-3233 (owner) drainage tubing" HOME 338-2373 6 THE RURAL VOICE Keith Roulston Don't throw out past lessons When the world was going crazy about the turning of the millennium last year I was one of the skeptics. When the new year turned on January 1. I thought, it will be much the same as every other changing of the year. Yet now, in examining the subtle change in the way I think myself, I realize I was wrong. Suddenly things we did in 1990. instead of just being 10 years ago, are something we did in the last century. The incredible changes in the way we do things become, not just the type of change we were undergoing throughout the 1990s, but the signal of a new age. This of course fits in to the trend of the last few years. "You can't drive forward looking in the rear view mirror", many proponents of change have stated. It's a philosophy that's been embraced by society in general. We're ready to throw out many things that worked in the past because this is a new era. So, from government medical care to farm produce marketing boards, many people are ready to abandon solutions to problems of the past. The past, in our forward -thinking society, is passe. When kids go back to school this month, they'll be studying Tess history than my generation did. In high school students can now graduate with barely any exposure to history in their teenage years. But while it's true you can't go forward looking in the rear view mirror, any careful driver also knows you have to keep checking the mirror to see what dangers might be catching up on you. As Harry Truman said, "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know". While much is made these days about innovation and about information, the word wisdom is seldom spoken. Wisdom. according to Webster's dictionary, is "intell- igence drawing on experience and governed by prudence". But no Matter how long we live we can never experience everything for our- selves. The genious of human beings has been that, by writing things down, we've been able to transfer the experience of others to future generations. That's called history. We put ourselves in danger when we think what happened in the past is no longer important. It's arrogance to say that the experience of those who went before us has no validity in our lives. Yet that's what we're doing by downplaying the importance of history in our forward -thinking lives. We're concentrating so much on learning those "important" things like computer training and science and technology, that we're not likely to have the wisdom of how to apply the new knowledge to the best advantage of ourselves and future generations. Even if we know the lessons of our fathers and grandfathers, we're apt to push them to the back of our minds and not give them much weight. But the old saying goes that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. That might be modified in a different way to say that those who don't use today's knowledge based on the lessons of past generations are bound to miss the opportunity to have the best of both worlds. It's never good to be frozen in time past, but it's also foolish to throw out what was good about the past. If we want a society that uses its new knowledge wisely, we should be making sure our students learn the lessons of the past. Even our agricultural colleges, for instance, could be teaching students about the history of farming, including the struggles of farmers to gain more power in the marketplace, instead of teaching only about the newest technology. We should be striving to produce people who are not just smart, but wise.0 Keith Roulston is editor and publisher of The Rural Voice. He lives near Blyth, ON.