Back
in the summer, I was looking at my dad’s notes from his Forest
Technician course back in the late 1960s. Two big green 3-ring
binders – stuffed with hundreds of pages, all done on a typewriter
on thin paper, with charts and sketches in coloured felt pens.
It’s
hard to get my head around the fact that he, and all the students at
all the schools from his time and before, worked without ’puters,
printers and the internet. That’s prehistoric! The time investment
in the notes alone would have sunk me!
But
there’s more than hard labour in those 40-plus-year-old notes –
and that’s the course content. I wrote in an earlier post
about how one job description today covers a long and expanding list
of different employment and career choices in the turf management
industry. But I think I’m correct to say that our industry was
narrowly focused, and much more limited in applications and options
back then. So, looking in the rear-view mirror, as it were, in those
old binders, I wondered how much cross-over of information went into,
and maybe still does contribute, to building the modern courses we’re
taking at Guelph U.
Some
of the binders’ content has barely changed; e.g. learn 65 trees and
bushes by leaf, twig, bud, fruit and bark. That’s still plain
old skull work today – but the old courses also covered a number of
topics in depth that, to my rookie eyes, relate directly to what we
will be learning.
Soils
and Geology, for instance… or Forest Pathology (diseases and
parasites), or Silviculture, from raising seedlings to reforestation.
Obviously, the topics were focused on trees not turf, and a lot
of new knowledge has been learned since then, but the core
information was there. And I like the thought that I’m learning
along the same paths nearly half a century later.
Also…
I REALLY like the fact that I have my ’puter and the internet
to work with.
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