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Isaiah Lewis
Mrs. Cann
Rhetoric
First Semester
October 20, 2014
If You Teach a Man to Think
There is an old Chinese proverb that says, “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a
day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.” The supposed jewel of wisdom in
this proverb is that by teaching a man the skills necessary to fish, one ensures his ability to
achieve long-term success, function independently, and provide for himself. This, however, is
not entirely true. What should the man in this proverb do in the event of a drought, a harsh
winter, or illness? How can he be expected to succeed with a skill set that is entirely limited to
fishing? If one truly wants to provide this man with the skills for long-term success, one must
teach him how to perceive the world in such a way that he will have the resourcefulness
necessary to feed himself in any environment and under any condition. The same principle
applies to education. Simply preparing students for a single career path is not enough. Students
need to be taught a wide array of skills using a plethora of different teaching philosophies in
order to be equipped for success. Truly learned individuals are able to problem solve, absorb
information from the world around them, and analyze that information critically.
Society often equates elite education with flawless performance. In reality, the greatest
indicator of a truly educated person is their ability to recover from unexpected and seemingly
insurmountable obstacles. Unfortunately, the American educational system as a whole, does not
encourage, and in fact hinders students from gaining these problem solving skills. In “My Insane
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Homework Load Taught Me How to Game the System,” Elif Koc explains that students lack the
drive to learn because they can achieve the same amount of “success” simply by storing facts in
their short term memory, only to toss them aside right after the exam. “There is a difference
between being a good learner and a good student, and in high school, my peers and I learned how
to be good students” (Koc 2). This disparity between what Koc describes as learners, and
students, has profound implications.
The inability of students to problem solve is a direct result of their ability to cheat the
system. Like highly skilled jewel thieves, “good” American students steal “A” after “A” without
ever tripping the alarms alerting the authorities that they have learned nothing. True learners, as
Koc calls them, store the concepts they are taught in their problem solving tool box as a potential
resource for later use. Koc goes on to claim that the collegiate level of education is where
students are ultimately forced to make the transition from students to learners. Koc’s belief in
college as a true institution of education is not completely ill-founded; liberal arts colleges
devote themselves to producing well-educated students. In an article entitled, “What Would an
Ideal College Look Like? A Lot Like This,” John Tierney explains how the liberal arts approach
to education better prepares students for the problems they face in the workplace. Liberal Arts
students are well-equipped to face the problems they face in life simply because they are
committed to preparing for future conditions instead of the conditions of the here and now.
Truly learned individuals also have a keen sense of self-awareness. Self-awareness goes
far beyond simply recognizing one’s own existence. In fact, it has just as much to do with
oneself, as it does with the world around oneself. In a commencement speech addressed to the
2005 graduating class from Kenyon College, David Foster Wallace explores this concept through
a short yet powerful anecdote. He speaks of two young fish that are swimming. The two fish
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pass by a much older fish who greets them by saying, “Morning boys, how’s the water?” After
passing the older fish, one of the younger fish turns to the other and asks, “What is water?” The
message behind Wallace’s short story is seemingly obvious: wise people are aware of their
surroundings. However, when one stops to consider what water represents in this story, a deeper
lesson is revealed. Water is not only something that the two young fish in this story take for
granted, it is what they share with every other living thing in their environment. Learned people
do not take the beautiful intricacy of everyday life for granted simply because they have an
abnormally strong understanding of how it works. This appreciation for everyday life also
precipitates a strong sense of empathy and joy because the connections between all aspects of
life become more apparent.
Self-awareness is not always gained in the classroom as truly learned individuals do not
always receive their education in the traditional setting or through the traditional channels. By
way of example, in a memoir written about his mother entitled “Blue-Collar Brilliance,” author
Mike Rose explains that his mother, who was a waitress in an American diner, displayed acute
intelligence despite her lack of formal education. He recounts he r uncanny ability to sense the
slightest social cues and claims that these skills are just as valuable in the workforce as anything
taught by traditional educational institutions. This is largely because emotional intelligence, or
the ability to recognize and analyze the emotions of others, is gained through real world
experiences. In the stuffy confines of academia, students often lose a connection to the human
aspect of their respective field of study. The usefulness of emotional intelligence is not limited to
the blue collar workplace. Later on in the memoir, Rose explains how his Uncle Joe’s emotional
intelligence served him well as he rose from a blue collar factory floor worker, to a supervisor of
a GM paint-and-body branch. Joe’s consistent success during his rise from blue collar worker to
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white collar manager shows that the skills he gained as a blue collar worker, without any formal
education, not only translated into the white collar workforce, but allowed him to enter the white
collar work force in the first place. Joe did not waste the knowledge he gleaned from his astute
observations, “Joe found problems to solve: Joe initiated the redesign of the nozzle” (Rose 248).
Like all truly learned individuals, Joe demonstrates the ability to analyze the observations he
makes about his own environment. Ultimately, this ability gives learned individuals a
competitive advantage over others because they are able to see potential problems and solutions
long before others. In Joe’s case, his self-awareness and analytical skills allotted him a great
deal of success in the automotive industry, despite his lack of formal education.
In most instances, educators unwittingly encourage tunnel vision in their students. Like
the man in the old Chinese proverb, students are taught very specific skills without receiving the
additional tools necessary to ensure that they are able to succeed no matter the circumstances.
Learned individuals supplement their traditional education with situations, whether they be
hypothetical or real-world, that develop their ability to problem solve, observe, and analyze. In
some cases, learned individuals do gain these skills from academic intuitions such as Liberal
Arts colleges, which encourage students to think critically about every aspect of life.
Interestingly enough, learned individuals are not always formally educated. The skills required
to be deemed truly learned can be attained just as easily, and in some cases more easily, in blue
collar settings than white collar settings. The ideal learned individual has both traditional
academic and nontraditional skills. Walt Whitman captured this duality perfectly in his timeless
poem, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”:
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
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When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
Truly learned individuals, are not simply vessels for information. They are eager to apply the
information they obtain to the problems they face. Perhaps more importantly, learned
individuals are self-aware. They appreciate the complexity and beauty of the world around them,
and for that, their lives are all the richer.