We Can Teach Him How to Fish Only If He Wants A Fish - From Environmental Perspective - Part 1

An unknown person once said (not Laozi);

"Give a man a fish and you him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime"

This phrase has become one of the most beloved quotes among teachers and development workers, who in fact fail in following this maxim quite often.

However, this "Teach Him How to Fish" practice is much more complicated and difficult than it sounds. From my experiences from development to teaching kids how to do the math, I think we often face the following problems:

We don't know how to teach how to fish (and don't accept this fact)
We don't want to teach how to fish
A man doesn't want to learn how to fish
A man doesn't have a fishing tackle
The first case is a typical example of Washinton Consensus (as described here). We simply don't figure out how to fish in many cases. Maybe it was just a luck that we could fish in our fishing place.

The second is mostly associated with the problems of aid agencies. Their business (survival) model and incentives are morphed for rather giving a fish than teaching how to fish. We don't want to teach how to fish when our survival depends on the number of fish we give.

I see next problem when tackling environmental issues. Some development experts faced this problem when our fishing approach demolishes existing business (here).

The last one is a problem that we might be able to solve by investing him. Even in the third cases, he may have a better idea how to fish and wants to give a shot, but we might have forced him to learn our fishing method and instead taken his motivation away.

I would like to think about the solution in next article.