Try Your Hand - Agree/Disagree - Assignment Key Words - Writing Projects

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Read the following passage, in which philosopher Robert Fulghum makes a claim about morality:

All 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 every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon. . . .

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

— from All I Really Need to Know
I Learned in Kindergarten
©1986 by Robert Fulghum

Step 1: Fulghum claims that the moral principles one learns in kindergarten are sufficient guidelines for adult behavior. What is your opinion?
Step 2: How did you go about formulating your opinion of Fulghum's claim?

•When we agree or disagree with an idea or position, we explain to our listener or reader how and why our ideas are the same as or different from the ideas of others.

•Agreeing and/or disagreeing is the starting point for proving the credibility of a position and persuading readers or listeners.

Have you received an assignment that calls for you to agree or disagree with a stated position? Do Your Own is a section that can help you get started. We also have some samples of CUNY assignments that ask students to agree or disagree.

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