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All I Really Need To Know
I Learned In Kindergartenby Robert
Fulghum
- an excerpt from the book, All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten
All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten.
ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live
and what to do
and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not
at the top of the graduate-school mountain,
but there in the
sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned: Share
everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your
own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your
hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life - learn
some and think some
and draw and paint and sing and dance and play
and work every day some.
Take a nap every
afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic,
hold hands, and stick together.
Be aware
of wonder.
Remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup:
The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody
really
knows how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even
the little seed in the
Styrofoam cup - they all die.
So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books
and the first word you learned
- the biggest
word of all - LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere.
The Golden Rule
and love and basic sanitation.
Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.
Take any of those items and extrapolate
it into
sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your
family life or your work or your government or
your world
and it holds true and clear and firm.
Think what a better world it would be if
all - the whole world - had cookies
and milk about
three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with
our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments
had
a basic policy to always put thing back where
they found them and to clean up their own mess.
And it is still
true, no matter how old you
are - when you go out into the world, it is best
to hold hands and stick together.
© Robert Fulghum, 1990.
Found in Robert
Fulghum, All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten, Villard Books: New York, 1990, page 6-7.
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