A lesson on how not to do it, a lesson for all of us

WITH gratitude we heave a sigh of relief that authorities have decided to call off the three-day dry-run for Talomo Bridge closure and just pick out lessons from the horrendous jam last Wednesday, June 20.

For indeed, last Wednesday was a whole day lesson on how not to do it, capped with the stranding of hundreds downtown because very few public vehicles plied the routes going south.

Last Monday also unmasked us as the undisciplined bunch, majority of us really are stripped of the illusion that Dabawenyos are disciplined, we witnessed how thousands would prefer to jam up the whole roadway just to get ahead of everybody. The result? Everybody got stuck.

Would the return of good manners and right conduct in the grade school curriculum change the persons these generations have become?

We do not know, but we surely hope it would.

While indeed values education integrated into all subjects especially Sibika is well-intentioned, it has complicated what should have been a very simple and basic lesson: good manners and right conduct, as a separate lesson and with its own sets of tests and recitation.

We can learn a lot from Robert L. Fulghum's best-selling classic: "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" (1986).

In a nutshell, these are: "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.

"Play fair." If there are hundreds ahead of you in traffic, it's because these motorists drove out ahead of you. Play fair, do not overtake and wait for your turn.