Informative Grade 10 Polonius’ Advice to Laertes
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in
Kindergarten
Read the excerpt from William Shakespeare Hamlet and Robert Fulghum’s “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” Discuss the advice both authors give about how to live life. How do the lessons we learn as children apply to the advice we receive as young adults? Use details from the passages to support your ideas. All I Really Need 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 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 everyday 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.
Polonius’ Advice to Laertes In Shakespeare’s tragic play, Hamlet, Polonius is an officer of the king’s court. The following passage of the play is his advice to his son, Laertes, as he leaves for France.
Hamlet I, iii, 59-­‐80 Lines 59-­‐60 Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportioned thought his act. Line 61 Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. Lines 62-­‐65 Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-­‐hatch’d, unfledged comrade. Lines 65-­‐69 Beware Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment. Lines 70-­‐74 Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man, And they in France of the best rank and station Are of a most select and generous chief in that. Lines 75-­‐77 Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. Lines 78-­‐80 This above all: to thine ownself be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. unproportioned: unfitting vulgar: friendly with everybody new-­‐hatched, unfledged comrade: new, untried friend censure: opinion chief: expert husbandry: thriftiness