Who said teach a man to fish

Now you are at risk of losing everything. Same goes for getting into a car accident or arrested for possession of marijuana: the ramifications of the same mistake are wildly different based on income, race and gender.

So why do we put so much stock in programs that teach people a skill that they can barely put to use? The obvious answer is that these programs absolve us of the responsibility to rethink the structure of our society.

When we claim to be teaching a man to fish, we are ignoring the reason why they need to be taught to fish in the first place; we are doing nothing about the underlying issue—an unequal distribution, not only of fish, but also of access to fishing equipment, ponds, bait, education, and places to cook whatever is caught. In America, the poor are more likely to live in neighborhoods with high rates of crime, worse schools, and poor air quality.

More likely to live in dilapidated, unsafe, and unhealthy apartments that are also unaffordable. More likely to be incarcerated for small crimes for which the non-poor and white are often let off with a warning. The book was published in but the story was put into print a few years earlier. The American magazine Littell's Living Age printed the story in its September issue and it was taken from an earlier but undated issue of the British Macmillan's Magazine.

So, the proverb dates from or shortly before and there's every reason to suppose that it was coined by Anne Ritchie. Teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

So, for example, if you give a hungry man a fish then his hunger will be satisfied, but only for a short time. If, instead, the man were taught how to fish, then he could eat whenever he got hungry. Well, assuming he is able to catch a fish whenever he wanted to. In an instance similar to the text above was printed in a Wisconsin newspaper. In every public health program the aim is not only to perform a given service but to teach the individual positive attitudes toward health which will benefit him throughout life.

The purpose is well stated in an old Indian proverb. If you teach a man to fish, he will be richer forever. In November the testimony of a missionary named Fred Nelson who had worked in Taiwan and mainland China was presented in a Rockford, Illinois newspaper.

You teach him to fish and you give him an occupation that will feed him for a lifetime. Speers suggested a Chinese origin for the expression: 9. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for his life time. In May a newspaper in Van Buren, Missouri printed the saying, and indicated that it had been spoken during a convention held in Melbourne, Australia: Teach him to fish and he can feed himself for many meals. To paraphrase Lao-tse and Chairman Mao, can the American people understand that it is better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish?