All I Ever Needed To Know I Learned In Kindergarten

Years ago I read this poem and loved it!  I was working with preschool children at that time and although they weren't yet kindergarteners, I thought this poem fit them as well. This poem no longer fits early childhood.  It seems that more and more our legislators and policy makers are wanting little people to enter kindergarten (or preschool for that matter) ready to take on Harvard.  Why is it that we want to throw away years of research which says young children learn best by play?  This year my own division started nine week benchmark testing for kindergarten. When did testing and learning become synonyms?   I am angered, and saddened, and horrified at news like this that seem to be posted daily.  (A very Scary Headline). And I am no fool.  I will adamantly declare that this is a bipartisan problem and it all comes down to which big business is lobbying/blackmailing/bribing which politician..  Why is the almighty dollar more important than children?    I weep for the children. 

All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten   ~by Robert Fulghum

Most of what 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 sandbox at nursery 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 some every day.

Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic 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 plastic cup - they all die. So do we.

And then remember the book about Dick and Jane 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 sane living.

Think of what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and clean up our own messes. 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.