*Editor’s Note: The Stampede asked Dr. Brown to provide us with a copy of her speech from Saturday’s Dean’s List ceremony. For those who missed it, scroll through the following to learn why we college students were laughing and reminiscing on our sweet lives as six-year olds.
By Dr. Kellie D. Brown
February 15, 2014
Good afternoon. It is a great privilege/joy for me to be with you and to share a few thoughts on learning. But first, let me say Congratulations to you students on your hard work and this important academic achievement. As a faculty member, I know that the curriculum here at Milligan is demanding and since I was once a college student, I know that college life can offer many tempting distractions from studies, so making it on the Dean’s List is truly something to celebrate. And to your parents, I say, indulge in this moment of pride. My son Jordan just graduated from college in December, and I know about the worrying and sacrificing that parents endure to help their children succeed and how rewarding moments like this are to us.
As I was preparing for today, I started thinking about all of the different ways that we learn. There are, of course, academic classes and research, and the wisdom we glean from God’s Word. And then there are the more informal ways that we learn about living life, those practical lessons that we get from our own experiences and from the experiences of others. It reminded me of a book written in 1988 (yes, before most of you students were born) called All I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum. Fulghum was born in Waco, Texas in 1937 and has led a unique and diverse life from being a ditch-digger to a singing cowboy, to a career at IBM, and then returned to graduate school for a theology degree and became a minister. In addition to publishing eight best-selling books, he is also an accomplished painter, sculptor, and musician. Despite all of his successes, it is this book about the simple lessons that we should learn around age 5 or 6 for which he is most known. After 25 years, Robert Fulghum still believes these lessons would transform our world if everyone followed them. While I read a few of them to you, transport yourself back to being a little child and to when you might have been told these things. (Some of us might have needed reminding when we were big kids, too.)
Some of his 16 lessons are quite simple….
Others are more profound…..
dance and play and work everyday some.
go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are
all like that.
This book and its simple wisdom has resonated not just with me but with people all over the world, becoming Number One on the New York Times Bestseller List and selling more than 7 million copies. It was just released a few months ago in its 25th anniversary edition, and it has even been staged as a successful play with thousands of national and international productions. (Barter reference?)
A 19th century English minister named Charles Caleb Colton once said, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” and if that is to be believed, then it further demonstrates the impact of Fulghum’s book. Since 1988, there have been many books that have imitated his kindergarten formula, some more serious than others, including
I’ve become sort of a collector of these types of books. My most recent acquisition is All I Need to Know I Learned from My Cat. If you’re a cat person, you know that they have quite their own take on life. Some of my favorite advice from this book includes:
So, my question today is, can we learn important lessons from kindergarten or cartoon characters or animals or Dr. Seuss? Do movie characters such as Forrest Gump and his oft quoted wisdom “Life is like a box of chocolates…..” impact us? My opinion is… Yes. I think that seeking to be lifelong learners allows us the opportunity to embrace knowledge and wisdom wherever they might appear and entrusts us with the responsibility and discernment to seek it out. And sometimes, in the process, we discover that it is the insight of a child or child-like thinking that is the most profound.
I would like to conclude with this short children’s poem by the author A.A. Milne, who created Winnie the Pooh, entitled:
“Now We Are Six”
When I was one,
I had just begun. When I was two,
I was nearly new. When I was three
I was hardly me. When I was four,
I was not much more. When I was five,
I was just alive.
But now I am six,
I’m as clever as clever,
So I think I’ll be six now for ever and ever. –A.A. Milne
Again, congratulations to you on making the Dean’s List at Milligan College, and I hope that everyone has a wonderful Family Weekend.
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