Monday, September 18, 2023

The rules

From a pre-school:

~ No hurts.

~ Be kind.

~ Have fun.

Useful for later life too.

[“No hurts,” as explained to me: “Keep your hands to yourself.”]

comments: 5

Daughter Number Three said...

I think about the difference between the meaning of "kind" and "nice." Without looking them up, I'd say the first is more active. While they're both good, "niceness" is part of civility, while "kindness" goes beyond that to empathy and maybe even mutual aid. You can't be kind without being nice, I think, but you can be nice without being kind.

Fresca said...

Everything we needed to know we learned in pre-K?

Michael Leddy said...

At least a lot of what one needs to learn. Henry James said (really said) that there are three important things in life: to be kind, to be kind, and to be kind.

I checked the index card I had in my pocket to make sure that it said kind, not nice. I agree with DN3: kindness is different and bigger. Nice to my ear suggests kids acting like little ladies and gentlemen.

“No hurts,” as I now know, names an approach to early childhood education.

Fresca said...

I looked up the etymology—
Fowler in 1926 said “nice” has been diluted to “a mere diffuser of vague and mild agreeableness."
There’s something to be said for niceness though—I always loved in “Lucky Jim” when Jim thinks,
“nice things are so much nicer than nasty ones.”

Kindness need not be nice—
—it’s kind (we think) to put down a suffering animal, for instance.

Michael Leddy said...

Yes, and painful honesty can be a form of kindness too.

But don’t you cringe when you hear someone say they like “nice things”? (That is, expensive things.)