The Hypocrisy of Kindergarten

Here’s your basic schedule in Kindergarten: Finger paint, go to recess, take a nap, eat, go to another recess, and then go home. Plus, if you pee in your pants everyone is super understanding. Mainly it’s preparing you for what your life will be like once you graduate from college with a liberal arts degree. There’s a book I’ve never read that a lot of people quote called “Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” It’s all about sharing and being nice to people and other valuable lessons I suppose, but I can’t bring myself to read it because I think Kindergarten is a terrible idea. Don’t get me wrong I get that it’s intended to kind of help kids transition from being at home all day into the daily grind of school, but it’s very misleading. I think a better title for a book would be “It’s All Down Hill After Kindergarten.”

I did learn one valuable lesson in Kindergarten though. One day I came up with a joke, it wasn’t that funny of a joke but 4 year old’s are an easy audience, and the first few kids I told thought it was hilarious. Unfortunately, one of those kids, who I won’t name even though I totally want to, told the joke to our teacher who then proceeded to tell all the parents while bragging about how funny the little joke-stealer who told it to her was. Of course, when I tried to tell the teacher that it was in fact my original joke, she told me that I shouldn’t go around trying to take credit for someone else’s idea. So, I guess in retrospect maybe my main problem with Kindergarten is that I had an awful teacher who didn’t recognize my young comedic genius.

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