Problem
"The Credo," Robert Fulghum In response to the text written by Robert Fulghum. Question 1 and 2 should be answered in a paragraph.
A. Summarize the main "point" of the text.
a. Is Fulghum really saying that all you need to know you learn in kindergarten?
b. Would you survive if you only learned those things?
c. What comment is he making about society in general? Take a look at the end of the credo...
B. Personally respond to the text.
a. What do you think of Fulghum's ideas about how to live?
b. How do your own experiences make you think about the message that he is communicating?
c. What would your life be like if you simply stuck to the lessons you learned before you started the first grade?
I've put the story at the bottom
The Credo, Robert Fulghum
All I really 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 hand 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 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.