A Preface to Lunch Everything I learned in kindergarten was a lie

Author: James O'Brien

In 1986, Robert Fulgham published a famous essay entitled "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten." I'm considering writing a sort of companion piece to this essay called "Everything I Learned in Kindergarten was a Lie."

In kindergarten we were taught to play fair, share and not hit people. Those who still followed these rules in high school got cheated, robbed and beat up. That being said, I think the world would be a better place if no one ever left kindergarten. Should they force us to move on, I would like to go directly from kindergarten to second grade in my next life. I didn't like first grade because the word "first" was, and is, intimidating. Also, my teacher, Mrs. Nickerson, smelled like prune juice.

In kindergarten I watched Sesame Street's "One of these things is not like the other things" segment for the first time. This periodic one-minute section of the show featured a core Muppet character - like Cookie Monster or Big Bird - looking at four things, one of which was different than the other three, even though it shared similar properties. "One of these things is not like the other things. One of these things just doesn't belong," sang the core Muppet. Now, if this wasn't a blatant attempt to create a sea of prejudiced child armies, then the Pope isn't Catholic - and Mr. Nickerson doesn't throw up whenever he eats prunes.

This Sesame Street song goes against our unselfish desire to love things that are different, but I think it captures our national attitude perfectly. Our liberal enthusiasm for diversity is at war with our intrinsic fear of things dissimilar to us. I'm not saying that everyone runs and hides when they see someone who is different from them, but most students I see simply choose to spend time with others who are more or less similar. Here at Middlebury, we are immersed in diversity and encouraged to "celebrate it." In an attempt to take this sentiment to heart, I threw a diversity party in my room this weekend. Unfortunately, the turnout was smaller than that of the Ross Toga Party. It was just me and the Swedish mail-order bride I was iChatting with on my computer. This party was not a reflection of the campus' opinion on diversity but more of a testament to the party's complete lack of publicity and my own lack of friends.

I mean, multiculturalism certainly has its strong points, but it has a long way to go to overcome the fact that people naturally feel most comfortable around others who are like them. Breaking out of this comfort zone is tough. As a result, the international students hang out exclusively with international students. Football players hang out with football players. Prominent members of WRMC hang out with other prominent members of WRMC. Meanwhile, I hang out with myself, battling my ninth grade English professor in Scrabulous and listening to S Club 7's Greatest Hits. If this sounds good to you, by all means, I am looking for another one of us.

This tendency to seek easy company rather than diverse interactions seems almost hard-wired. For the diversity concept to work, we need people to go against their instincts in order to promote the common good. And, not surprisingly, this rarely works. We can get all kinds of different people and put them together in a room - or a liberal-arts college - but after a while most will simply slink into the corner with other people who are like them.

With the help of CBS, I have come up with a solution to this problem. Everyone in America will be split up into his or her own homogenous Survivor-esque tribes. We will then gather together once a year in order to outwit, outlast and outplay people who are different than us - with each team wearing their own distinct T-shirt. Fun for everyone! Each homogenous group would get to create an event, and the other groups would begrudgingly participate, all the while cursing the stupidity of the games which they did not invent themselves. I would imagine that every one of these Diversity Olympics would end in a tie between most groups, while one or two teams - probably the S Club 7 listeners and the prominent members of WRMC - would somehow manage to lose the challenge that they invented. This type of society would completely circumvent the need for understanding of any kind. Is this what we've been waiting for? I hope not. But I do know that I rarely see a diversity of opinions and ethnicities like I did on "Barney and Friends." "C-A-T" still spells "cat," but most of the things I learned in kindergarten were lies.

James O'Brien '10 is an English major from Medfield, Mass.