Teach a Man to Fish

As the old proverb goes, give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. So why does our society, to the extent that it does anything to help our fellow man, and woman, seem much more inclined to hand out a fish and move on? The short answer is because it's easier that way, and we can walk away from the transaction with a minimal amount of effort and feeling good about ourselves. It's the feeling you get when you pass a vagrant on the streets and give him some change out of your pocket. It doesn't cost much, you feel like a good samaritan, and you can move on with your life without giving much thought to why the person needed the money or what he'll spend it on or how he'll get his next handful of change. To a large degree our social welfare system is set up on this model. Throw poor and working class people a little bone now and then, in the form of an increase in the minimum wage every decade or so, some rent assistance or food stamps, and then we can go back about our business. Hey, we did our part right, we gave up our hard earned tax dollars to help someone less fortunate, and isn't that what makes Americans so great?

Besides, taking the time to teach a man to fish is so, well, time consuming. It requires some effort, a level of understanding of the needs of someone else at more than the surface level. To do it well it even requires learning about that person, what their strengths and weaknesses are. It necessitates follow-up, to be sure that the task has been not only learned but mastered. It's hard work but as with most things the harder the task the greater the reward. Such is the case with educating our young people, especially those from the working class and the bottom fifth of the socio-economic scale.

When I say educating young people let's be clear about what it is not. It is not helping them atain a diploma that carries about as much weight as the paper it's printed on. Nor is it helping them pass some standardized test so they can get said diploma. Nor is it teaching them the state capitals, how to diagram a sentence, memorizing the periodic table of the elements, or whatever other random nonsense we teach kids in high schools across the country. Education is an awakening of the mind, an opening of the eyes, a lighting of the spirit. It is not teaching anything really, but rather making someone aware of the possibilities that exist and of the importance of taking certain steps to ensure that those possibilities are realized. In our society in the 21st century that means getting students to understand that their ticket to a prosperous life lies in one thing more than any other, and that is a college education.

A college education is not the golden key to riches and a life free of stress and worries, as most college graduates grinding it out at their jobs on a daily basis can attest to. It is not a guarantee of anything, but rather it provides an opporunity for an industrious, creative, and hard-working person to have a life with options, and a life of quality, if not always material wealth. In our country today however, there is a growing education gap between the rich and the poor, between the top fifth and the bottom fifth. This gap leads to both an increasing income disparity, but also potentially to a society that is more fractured and where more people feel less of a stake in the common good, namely because they feel left out of the party, unable to access the resources of the richest nation in the history of nations.

According to a longitudinal study by the University of Michigan, that has followed families since the 1960's, in recent years over 50% of those born in the top fifth of the economic ladder have earned the college degrees necessary to have a decent shot at a successful life, while only 11% of those born in the bottom fifth have earned such degrees. What that means is that nearly 9 of 10 poor or working class people are pretty much destined to stay in poverty. That is an astounding number, and doesn't seem to me much different than life for peasants under feudalism that existed from the middle ages until the French Revolution. It is a number that should shock and sadden people of conscience, much as imperial rule, genocide against American Indians, or slavery must have shocked people of conscience in earlier times. It is something that should be a major theme of this presidential campaign. It is something that should unite social liberals and Christian conservatives, urbanites and rural residents, young and old, you get the point. But does it? Or are we content to dig into our pockets for some spare change, feign a smile, and move on feeling like we've done our part?

There is hope however, in the numbers provided by this important study. Of those in the lowest fifth who do graduate college, there is a 62% chance that they will join the middle class, or the middle three-fifths. There is a 19% chance that they will join the top fifth, or the upper class. That means that 8 of every 10 poor kids who do go to college and graduate will have a better life than the ones that have been provided for them, and will then have children who are more likely to continue the trend that has kept our nation strong for over two centuries, the trend and promise of upward social mobility. So what do we do to teach a man to fish? It's pretty simple actually, we as a society need to do a better job of getting young people from the working class into college. We must give them the tools to succeed academically, but more importantly we must awaken them to the realities of the world in which they live in. We must give them inspiration to strive for college, and then the advice and support to help them fill out applications, write quality essays, prepare for SAT's, and fill out the paperwork required to receive the financial aid that is available to them. Then we need to continue to support them as they begin their journey, their transition into the middle class and in many senses a new set of values and norms that will govern their lives.

The work is hard, but rewarding, from both an individual standpoint as well as that of society as a whole. Poverty is the biggest ill facing our society in this age, it corrodes the soul, kills dreams, and turns happy and hopeful young people into beaten down and bitter adults over time. It will probably always be a part of our existence, but it doesn't need to be so intense nor so widespread. We have the resources to help people better themselves and society, and we certainly have the need as represented by the large amounts of talented, hard-working, and creative young people who just need to be taught how to fish so that they may feed themselves, and their future generations, for a lifetime.