Civility and Kindergarten
I've been thinking about a conference call I had this week with the American Bar Association Civility Task Force about encouraging more civil public discourse by all government officials, politicians, media, and advocacy groups. At one point, our conversation turned to what might be effective tools or practices of civility to promote, and we concluded that we needed to research existing civility tools and dispute resolution training programs to see what might be most useful. Perhaps sometimes in the world of government, politics, and public policy we just make things too complicated. Perhaps sometimes we just need to remember what most of us learned in kindergarten...
I’ve been thinking about a conference call I had this week with the American Bar Association Civility Task Force about encouraging more civil public discourse by all government officials, politicians, media, and advocacy groups. At one point, our conversation turned to what might be effective tools or practices of civility to promote, and we concluded that we needed to research existing civility tools and dispute resolution training programs to see what might be most useful.
Perhaps sometimes in the world of government, politics, and public policy we just make things too complicated. Perhaps sometimes we just need to remember what most of us learned in kindergarten…
(From Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Villard Books, New York, 1990. Pages 6-7)
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 blankets for a nap. Or if all governments
had a basic policy to always put things back where
they found them and to clean up their own mess.And it is still true, not matter how old you
are – when you go out into the world, it is best
to hold hands and stick together.