[.ca] All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: ... (ISBN 0345466179)

Simple-minded, boring stuff:
I remember exactly where I threw this book into the trash. It was in a chapter where Fulghum was wondering where all our "childhood potential" had gone. That is to say, kindergartners (allegedly) all say they can dance AND sing AND paint AND do anything at all. But when you talk with people of college age, you suddenly discover that they have chosen specialties, and are no longer acting as if they had "unlimited potential" in everything. Fulghum, bathetically, weeps over this enormous loss (?) and wonders what can be wrong with the world which so limits our unlimited potential. (Shades of the lunatic Rousseau!) As it happened, I was reading William James at the time, and William James produced an excellent explanation of the development which Fulghum was complaining about. To paraphrase: every man would like to be a millionaire, and a great lover, and a saint, and a famous warrior, and a philanthropist, and a star athlete, and a world-famous gourmet. BUT, once you start looking at things seriously, you obviously have to choose, because these roles cannot all fit together in one human being. The philanthropist would be at war with the millionaire, and the saint would conflict with the warrior, and the gourmet would conflict with the athlete. So we all concentrate on finding our strong points and developing them. People who are musically gifted will study music intensely, while mathematicians will pursue math. As James said, "I myself am a psychologist. I don't mind a bit if you can beat me in Ancient Greek, because I no longer 'carry that line,' as a shopkeeper would say. But, if you say that you are better than me at psychology, my attention is immediately engaged, because my intent is to be the best psychologist in the world." This is the normal pattern of child and adolescent development. That Fulghum could be ignorant of such an obvious thing truly does make one think that he stopped learning in kindergarten. And some people think that education is a life-long process! :-0 This book is poppycock. Not recommended at all.

Fun to read:
The original of this book was fun to read. It really makes you think about what kids know and what we have forgotten. I have been recommending this to friends since I read it earlier this year. A Great Read!

Buy it, read it, enjoy it, recommend it!:
Robert Fulghum has written a book of philosophy disguised as a book of anecdotes. Each lasts a couple of pages or so and is just enough to convey some important principle. They range from the trite to the inspirational, the mundane to the spiritual. Along the way he gives us his thoughts on grandfathers, God, children, giraffes, and just about everything you need to know. Some of his stories are about the man next door, others about famous people. Some are real, others made up, but they all convey universal truths. When you read this book you will probably think 'Hey I knew that already!' But all the same it's heart warming to have someone tell you in such a homely, friendly style. By the end of the book I felt I knew Robert Fulghum and would be happy to invite him to tea with me any time he happened to be passing. I read this on recommendation and in turn will be recommending it to anyone who will listen.

All I Really Need To Know I Learned From This Book:
I would recommend this book to anyone. The basic principle of the book is, everything you need to know about life, and how to live successfully stem from the basics that we all learned in kindergarten. Often, in many books there is a boring spot. Either the reader gets tired of waiting for the characters to interact with each other, or the plot isn't moving along, etc. With All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten, this is never the problem. Since each story is very short, if you don't like the characters in a story, it will be over shortly. The stories in the beginning of the book were the most meaningful, while at the end, the stories were incredibly good. In the middle of the book, the stories weren't as good, and the theme of Christmas was in about ten different stories. Since there are only about 60 stories, you can image how this got redundant. Other than these, I could personally relate to the essays and I think that anyone else would be able to also.

A MUST read for fans of the original & all others!:
ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN by Robert Fulghum is one of my all-time favorite books . . . it is a collection of essays that reflect the author's thoughts on life, death and a whole lot of other subjects in-between. So when I saw the 15th Anniversary Edition of the above, I naturally had to get hold of and then devour it . . . and am glad I did . . . it's GREAT! It is also quite different . . . or as the subtitle indicates, it is "reconsidered, revised, and expanded with 25 new essays." I liked all the new entries, but also got a kick out of revisiting the old ones . . . it was like being with friends I haven't seen before. Fulghum is that kind of author . . . once you read him, you'll want to get everything else he has written: IT WAS ON FIRE WHEN I LAY DOWN ON IT, UH-OH and MAYBE (MAYBE NOT) . . . you won't be disappointed in any of these, nor with his latest work either. There were several memorable passages in the 15th Edition that I had not come across before; among them: * "And so then what happened?" An urgent question out of the bedtime darkness, asked by my children, when they and I were young. Just when I thought I had slam-dunked a story-ending-just when I was certain the children were safely in the arms of the sandman--a small, sleepy voice would plead, "So, then what happened?" And no matter what I replied, the plea went on, "Please, please, Daddy--tell the rest of the story." In cranky desperation, I would resort to apocalypse: "Suddenly a comet hit the earth and blew everything to pieces." Silence. "What happened to the pieces?" "It doesn't matter. Everybody died a horrible death, especially all the little children who were not asleep." I also tried, "The father sold all the children who would not go to sleep to a passing gypsy who ground them into sausage meat. The first children to be ground up were those who would not stop asking questions." Go ahead, shame me. But it worked. Most of the time. On reflection, I suspect such gory endings were what they really liked most. Perhaps it was a scheme to see just how far I would go--to see how crazed their father really was. Now I am dealing with grandchildren who have the same restless minds. I am wilier now than I used to be. To the inevitable request for more, I reply, "Only your father knows the rest of the story. Ask him to finish it when you get home." * Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A Beauty Bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one first--before we tried anything else. It would explode high in the air--explode softly--and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth--boxes of Crayolas. And we shouldn't go cheap either--not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the word with imagination instead of death. A child who touched one wouldn't have his hand blown off. * I recall an old Sufi story of a good man who was granted one wish by God. The man said he would like to go about doing good without knowing about it. God granted his wish. And then God decided that it was such a good idea, he would grant that wish to all human beings. And so it has been to this day.