Although the innovation of IT has significantly contributed to the development of transportation and communication and conspicuously shortened the distance between rural and urban areas, the frequency of visits to the aged in rural areas slightly decreases year by year. Such phenomenon is a consequence of the deterioration of the reverence towards the old, and a growing number of people unconsciously participate in the trend, as the elder traditional values are not compatible with a society that accentuates professional education. However, the values of older generation should never be deemed inappropriate or too redundant to be taught, because those are lessons and wisdom that cannot be absorbed at even the most highly specialized universities or from famous celebrities. These lessons stem from the experiences of aged, and instruct primarily in the way to value and harmonize with others.
Regarding these traditional values of the aged, since they are constituted of the experiences that the aged have already undergone, they should be deemed valuable and values not neglected because the world unfortunately does not always operating in the neat, simple ways usually taught at school. Moreover, the best solutions for some unpredictable incidents are not products from particular academic training, but are from the folk, knowledge that is descended from our precedents who themselves faced the same problems and developed solutions at the occasion. For example, when I was young, bees stung me, and my mom was very scared and insisted on visiting the doctor. However, my grandmother calmed my mother and I by covering the finger with doenjang, a famous Korean spice. After a few hours, the pain abated and the swelling on the finger had gone down. This proves that often, quick folk treatments are more efficient than specialized expensive medication. Similarly, the significance of traditional values and wisdom is lucidly noticeable in Anaya¡¯s A Celebration of Grandfathers. Once he stepped on an anthill, and was severely bitten; the grandfather covered his welts with the cool mud from an irrigation ditch, and said: ¡°Know where you stand.¡± (Anaya 457, 14-15) Even though Anaya ostensibly described the lessons as ¡°simple lessons from a simple man,¡± (Anaya 459, 7) it is obvious that he does not really consider the lessons as simple, but as superior in their efficiency and practicality.
Social skills such as politeness and collectivism are other values that can be naturally acquired when people respect the aged. As more and more people migrate to urban areas, the life style of each person has diversified. As a consequence, individualism had been fostered, and people¡¯s concern and esteem towards others has considerably diminished. An example can be how a person can be mugged or beaten on a busy city street, yet no one stops to intervene. However, during the lives of our grandfathers and grandmothers, life was always filled with caring, helping, associating, and depending on others. To illustrate from A Celebration of Grandfathers, the grandfather taught Anaya to say the phrase, ¡°God give you a good day, grandfather (Anaya 457, 1-2),¡± when greeting the old ones. This simple phrase full much more respect than just saying ¡°hi¡± or ¡°hello,¡± is a phrase that has been passed on from generation to generation, emphasizing the cultural value of politeness and respect for others. Moreover, old people celebrated and suffered together. As written in the memoir, ¡°they helped each other through the epidemics and the personal tragedies, and they shared what little they had when the hot winds burned the land and no rain came.¡± (Anaya 457, 19-22) Nowadays, people do not even know who lives next door, let alone celebrate or adhere to this strong sense of community and belonging. The overriding message is that in order to promote the sort of humanity that makes the world a more pleasant and contented place, the older values never should be discarded.
Old values and traditions from the past should not be deserted or absurdly regarded only because they are seen as irrelevant to getting jobs or for scientific education. For many occasions and general harmony, life experience and knowledge from the aged is worth more than professional academic facts. Moreover, social skills not acquirable these days in an individualized society, can be easily transmitted to modernized people if we simply begin to once again regard the aged as the valuable resource that they are. Amaya probably wanted to make people aware that to neglect the old values or the importance of tradition is to be cut off from a rich source of personal and societal development. As Anaya said: ¡°they don¡¯t make men like that anymore,¡± societies that place too great a value on academic technology do not realize that this form of knowledge does not infuse people with a substantiated concept of humanity and our interrelations. The result is you have a generation that is ¡®smarter¡¯ and shrewd scholastically, but who is never experienced or skillful in dealing with the world. As such, the values from the past should not be allowed to slip between the cracks or forgotten.