曾經教過一篇小文，結果是一本暢銷書的第一章。很有道理，和大家分享。
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
by Robert Fulghum
To begin with, did I really learn everything I need to know in kindergarten?
Do I still believe that? Here is the original essay, followed by my editorial
reaction.
Each spring, for many years, I have set myself the task of writing a personal
statement of belief: a Credo. When I was younger, the statement ran for many
pages, trying to cover every base, with no loose ends. It sounded like a
Supreme Court brief, as if words could resolve all conflicts about the meaning
of existence.
The Credo has grown shorter in recent years—sometimes cynical, sometimes
comical, and sometimes bland—but I keep working at it. Recently I set out
to get the statement of personal belief down to one page in simple terms,
fully understanding the naïve idealism that implied.
The inspiration for brevity came to me at a gasoline station. I managed
to fill my old car’s tank with super deluxe high-octane go-juice. My old
hoopy couldn’t handle it and got the willies—kept sputtering out at
intersections and belching going downhill. I understood. My mind and my spirit
get like that from time to time. Too much high-content information, and I
get the existential willies. I keep sputtering out at intersections where
life choices must be made and I either know too much or not enough. The
examined life is no picnic.
I realized then that I already know most of what’s necessary to live a
meaningful life—that it isn’t all that complicated. I know it. And have known
it for a long, long time. Living it—well, that’s another matter, yes? Here’s
my Credo:
ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to liveand 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.
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 your 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 about
three o’clock every 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 into the
world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
Deep Kindergarten
As I write this I am sixty-five years old. Not so old, really, but I have been
around awhile. Kindergarten is a long way back there. What do I know now?
The Kindergarten Credo is not kid stuff.
It is not simple. It is elemental.
The essay answers the questions asked sooner or later by every one of us who
once stared out a classroom window wondering: Why am I here? Why do I have
to go to school?
We are sent to school to be civilized—to be introduced to the essential
machinery of human society. Early on in our lives we are sent out of the home
into the world. To school. We have no choice in this. Society judges it so
important that we be educated that we must go. It is the law. And when we
get to school we are taught the fundamentals on which civilization rests.
These are first explained in language a small child understands.
For example, it would do no good to tell a six-year-old that “Studies
have shown that human society cannot function without an equitable distribution
of the resources of the earth.” While this statement is profoundly and painfully
true, a child cannot comprehend this vocabulary. So a child is told that there
are twenty children and five balls to play with; likewise four easels,
three sets of blocks, two guinea pigs, and one bathroom. To be fair, we must
share.
Likewise a six-year-old will not understand that “By and large it has been
demonstrated that violence is counterproductive to the constructive interaction
of persons and societies.” True. But a child can better understand that the
rule out in the world and in the school is the same: Don’t hit people.
Bad things happen. The child must understand this rule is connected to the
first rule: People won’t share or play fair if you hit them.
It’s hard to explain the cost and consequences of environmental pollution
and destruction to a six year old. But we are paying a desperate price
even now because adults did not heed the instructions of kindergarten:
Clean up your own mess; put things back where you found them; don’t take
what’s not yours.
“The history of society is more defined by its understanding of disease
than its formulation of philosophy and political theory.” True. Basic
sanitation. Keeping excrement off our hands as well as out of our minds is
important. But it’s enough to teach a child to use the toilet, flush,
and wash his hands regularly.
And so on. From the first day we are told in words we can handle what has
come to be prized as the foundation of community and culture. Though the
teacher may call these first lessons “simple rules,” they are in fact
the distillation
of all the hard-won, field-tested working standards of the human enterprise.
Once we are told about these things, we soon discover we are taking a lab
course. We are going to be asked to try and practice these precepts every day.
Knowledge is meaningful only if it is reflected in action. The human race has
found out the hard way that we are what we do, not just what we think.
This is true for kids and adults—for schoolrooms and nations.
I am sometimes amazed at what we did not fully grasp in kindergarten.
In the years I was a parish minister I was always taken aback when someone
came to me and said. “I’ve just come from the doctor and he told me I have
a only a limited time to live.”
I was tempted to shout, “What? You didn’t know? You had to pay a doctor to
tell you—at your age? Where were you the week in kindergarten when you got
the little cup with the cotton and water and seed? Life happened—remember?
A plant grew up and the roots grew down. A miracle. And then a few days later
the plant was dead. DEAD. Life is short. Were you asleep that week or home
sick or what?”
I never said all that. But I thought it. And it’s true. The idea was for us
to have the whole picture right from the beginning. Life-and-death. Lifedeath.
One event. One short event. Don’t forget.
There’s another thing not everyone figures out right away: It’s almost
impossible to go through life all alone. We need to find our support group—
family, friends, companion, therapy gatherings, team, church or whatever.
The kindergarten admonition applies as long as we live: “When you go out
into the world, hold hands and stick together.” It’s dangerous out there—
lonely, too. Everyone needs someone. Some assembly is always required.
What we learn in kindergarten comes up again and again in our lives as long
as we live. In far more complex, polysyllabic forms, to be sure. In lectures,
encyclopedias, bibles, company rules, courts of law, sermons, and handbooks.
Life will examine us continually to see if we have understood and have
practiced what we were taught that first year of school.
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