All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

By Dr. David Laing Dawson

This clever little book was published in 1989 and is still going strong. And I was reminded of it last night while watching commentary on the Israel Hamas Gaza war, and the overnight missile and drone attacks by Iran, as I listened to pundits, commentators, military historians, retired generals, and politicians weigh in.

All men of course.

And what struck me from their interpretations, conclusions, advice and prognostications, was that they too learned all they need to know in kindergarten, or perhaps between JK and grade 4.

But unlike the author of the original book who took to heart the words of his teachers, these men, as boys, received their instructions on the school ground, in the yard, at recess, lunch time, and after hours.

There were a few moments when the speakers looked at the complexities of large masses of people governed by a hierarchy, with many ambitious men sitting precariously at the top with the level below them coveting their power, but mostly these countries were discussed as if they were single, large, sentient beings obeying the boy-rules of the primary school playground.

A “few” years ago a boy in grade 4 was regularly bullying some of my grade 2 classmates and I was the tallest of the boys in my class that year. So it happened that I volunteered, or was chosen, (I don’t remember how it came about) to fight this grade 4 boy. At recess a crowd gathered, creating a circle, a ring, and in that ring this boy and I squared off. I’m sure we tugged and pulled and pushed for a bit and then I got him down on the ground, with me on top, in control. But with a free hand he grabbed me by the throat and squeezed. I got off him and stood up. He left with his friends and never bothered my classmates again, and I was briefly a hero, though in reality I quit because he was choking me. And that was the first and last physical fight of my life, so far.

But at age 7 I was obeying the rules of human conduct espoused last night by those pundits on my television. And it did work in the school yard. The bully went away.

But surely to deescalate this situation in the mid east and move in the direction of a lasting peace we need to go beyond the wisdom and understanding of a 7 year old.

The decision makers in Iran, mindful of the ambitious cadre below them, responded as if in the school yard, tit for tat. But they know of Israel’s iron dome, it’s sophisticated systems. So they put on a show, a multimillion dollar barrage of missiles and drones, that would and did cause very little damage.

Leave it be. Israel and the US need not respond. The leaders of Iran don’t want to turn the mid east into an inferno. It was puffery, showing off, maintaining their politics.

Now it is Netanyahu’s time to be an adult, to leave behind the retaliation of the school yard, and work with whatever sane, adult world leaders he can find, to end this war.