He considers the abacus, an ancient device for calculating numbers, and relates a story where a man went up against a computer with an abacus. This opening essay is the most famous and oft-quoted in the collection.Īfter exploring these concepts in a bit more detail, Fulghum begins exploring other concepts. He realized that everything he truly needed to know or believe in had been passed down to him in Kindergarten: Share everything, play fair, don’t hit people, put things back where you found them, etc. This credo began as a very lengthy list of things, but over the years became refined down to fundamentals. In the Credo that begins the book proper, he states that he writes a statement of belief for himself every year.
All i ever needed to know i learned in kindergarten license#
He warns that he has used his imagination and creative license to adjust facts to suit his purpose, so none of the essays should be taken literally. He recounts seeing a bumper sticker in the midst of a snowstorm that read ‛Don’t Believe Everything That You Think,’ and how these words struck him as a very powerful way of looking at your own existence, how you cannot assume that you yourself have any sort of innate wisdom or expertise.
Fulghum begins by informing the reader that he wrote the essays over the course of years without any intention of publishing. The fifty essays are all very short, ranging in length from a few hundred to about 1,000 words. All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten is a collection of essays written by minister Robert Fulghum, published in 1986.
0 kommentar(er)
