Traditions?

What traditions really mean?
Is it some kind of costumes we need to wear in order to speak out of our inherent? Or is it some kind of behavior we need to follow to belong to the country we are living in?
Whether it is this or that there is a point which need to be clarified: What if some of those traditions were wrong or unmeasured? I mean we are way ahead from our ancestors-obviously!- so why do we have to still imitate all that old behavior. We always say that we are in the age of improvement and we teach our children to improve their skills, but how can we improve ourselves if we kept looking backward?! We cannot say two different opposite things at the same time, it is confusing!
I know that there are many good traditions that we need to preserve, but how about the bad ones? Instead of following every wrong rule we have, we should correct those rules and learn from them. Think about it, Is there any difference between our education now and the education long time ago?? Does your grandfather know as much as a college student know- supposing that this grandfather had college education? of course not. It cannot be like that.
I have another small example that might help us imagining the idea I'm talking about; in the past, girls used to get marry when they were thirteen years old, and they had to have children and be responsible for their families and home. Studies showed that if a girl got married in such early age it would be bad for her and might cause a lot of damage for her body if she gave birth for a child, it even might cause death!
Until when we will keep walking backward?
I must make it clear that I'm not with the idea that it is okay to lose our identities, it is something precious and we need to preserve it for the coming generations, but, we cannot accuse someone who is not wearing the traditional custom-deshdadha for example- as being a bad example for the youths, or to be brain washed by the 'Western' culture. He have the right to wear whatever he wants anytime he want.
After all, I am not criticizing anyone, I an just making a point to be a little open minded to the simple facts in the world, that it is moving and not standing still, and the time is ticking, we cannot just live in the past, rather than that, we must take every chance we have to find out what we are missing in this global circle.