Category: learning

My twin daughters started Kindergarten this morning. Such a milestone for us all that they are starting school.  Various emotions fill my heart and complicated thoughts fill my mind.  I am excited for them, as well as a little scared and sad.  They are entering a more public world.  Our well protected daughters will be going on field trips without us sometimes.  They have moved beyond their small homey daycare to a more demanding and sometimes challenging endeavor of learning more and expanding their social circle.  They are ready in so many ways, but I also sense that there will some difficulties to be faced.  That is the way of life. 

It seemed fitting to share a wonderful piece written by Robert Fulghum called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. What we are taught as children applies to our adult lives.  Fulgham pulled it all together quite nicely for us as a wise reminder.

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
(a guide for Global Leadership)

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 sand pile at 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 in 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 one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – had cookies and milk at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things 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 in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

You can visit Robert Fulgham’s web site at http://www.robertfulghum.com/