Teach a Man to Fish

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

— Chinese Proverb

There are two kinds of people in the world, facilitators and enablers.

The verbs facilitate and enable are synonyms, both generally meaning to make it easier for someone to do something. The noun forms, however, have taken on opposite connotations. A facilitator is a someone who helps a person or organization find a solution to a problem, while an enabler has come to mean a person who makes it possible for someone to continue with bad or destructive behavior.

A good boss knows how to be a facilitator — to help employees learn, grow and move forward. Most of us have experienced supervisors who are more concerned with their own success than that of their subordinates, a short-sighted vision at best. Effective leaders learn to delegate, support and encourage all team members.

I'm good at the supporting and encouraging part of this equation, but I think I fail as a delegator. I don't know if it's a lack of trust or my own control issues that get in the way of delegating, but I have never really learned to let go.

Good teachers also know the difference between facilitating and enabling. A teacher can talk and talk and talk, but most students need, in one way or another, to figure things out themselves. In this NY Times post, students were asked who were their best teachers and why. Over and over, responses included teachers who had high expectations and who encouraged independent thinking and learning.

But perhaps the arena where the difference between facilitation and enabling is seen most clearly is parenting. If you are a parent, you know that it is usually easier to do something yourself than to let your children to do it. Just think back to the last time your young child "helped" you fold the laundry or cook dinner or shovel the walk. If you're like me, your fingers itched and you had to swallow your offer of: "Here, let me do it." But that kind of restraint is essential for effective parenting, because we all know children who have been "over-enabled"; they're called brats.

Each child has different expectations of what constitutes parental help. My daughter has always been an "I'll-do-it-myself" kind of kid. I can't count the hours wasted when I butted in trying to help her, only to have her rip off her tights (for example) and begin again. "I do it myself" was practically her theme song. Despite sticking my nose in many times where it didn't belong, her innate independence has turned her into a highly motivated, successful young adult. She can be snappish, but she gets things done, and I think the art of delegation is going to take her a long time to master.

Her twin brother, on the other hand, has always welcomed any and all help. These babies were born at 24 weeks, and the boy's size and development lagged far behind his sister's for many years. There were things he could do and things he couldn't, but he was, and is an easy-going, lovely human being, graciously accepting any favor, large or small. I have never once heard him say "Let me do it myself."

When the twins were four, I learned about something called "assumed disability", which often goes hand in hand with an actual disability. With assumed disability, we assume that because someone cannot do one thing, they cannot do something else. From the beginning, my son had two loving, willing females to take care of him, and it took me a long time to figure out we weren't doing him any favors. One day, I heard myself ask the girl to go get her shoes and put them on; then I asked her to get his shoes so I could help him put them on. The bell finally rung and that poor boy's life has never been the same.

But the line between facilitating and enabling a child (especially one with disabilities) is a tricky one, serpentining across the sands of childhood, moving and changing while you're not looking. What is facilitating one day is enabling the next, and staying on top of that moving line takes constant vigilance.

I wish I had been better. I wish I had devoted more time, been stricter and demanded more. I wish I had worried less about his happiness and more about his independence. (Notice that I say this with perfect 20-20 hindsight.) Now the line between facilitating and enabling is a dotted one, and I'm not at all sure how to help him make the right connections. I feel lost, hamstrung by his age, the law and my own expectations.

Don't get me wrong. I've taught him many of the skills necessary for independent living: he does his own laundry, is a pretty decent cook and can get around on public transportation. But his ability to think things through from start to finish or to anticipate are impaired. Is it possible to teach common sense?

I know (hope, believe) that if he could find his passion, the independence would follow. But can you facilitate passion? Can you even enable it? I don't think so. This is just one of those things he's going to have to do himself. And I'm going to have to learn to let him.

How have you been facilitated, or how have you been a facilitator? Or tell us your tale about enabling instead. Just click here.

Dear Erica, Or Is Public Education Dead?

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe in the value of public education and those who feel it is a failed experiment.

I stand firmly with Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father and author of the Declaration of Independence, who believed that public education for all was essential for sustaining democracy. Are there problems with the American educational system? Certainly, but that should inspire us to action, not abandonment. 

There is a valedictorian address by a 2010 high school graduate, Erica Goldson, that has gone viral. If you haven't seen or read it, you should. Goldson makes a passionate argument against the current state of education, going so far as to liken it to enslavement, brainwashing and insanity.

Many of her points are well taken. The goal-driven, standards-based, business model of contemporary education plagues me, as well. People are not interchangeable parts; we are not standard issue and cannot be evaluated nor educated as if we were. Here is part of Goldson's eloquent argument:

"We are all very special, every human being on this planet is so special, so aren't we all deserving of something better, of using our minds for innovation, rather than memorization, for creativity, rather than futile activity, for rumination rather than stagnation? We are not here to get a degree, to then get a job, so we can consume industry-approved placation after placation. There is more, and more still."

The irony, of course, is that Goldson uses her very education to speak against those who taught her to think for herself, to write a coherent speech, and to stand boldly in public to deliver her treatise. She states that were it not "… for the rare occurrence of an avant-garde tenth grade English teacher, Donna Bryan, who allowed me to open my mind and ask questions before accepting textbook doctrine, I would have been doomed." Well, brava for Ms. Bryan. Many of us can recall a special teacher, sometimes even the exact moment, when our minds were opened. We should bless those teachers, thank them, and encourage our best, brightest and most enthusiastic minds to become educators.

What I know that young Ms. Goldson does not, is that educational philosophy operates like a slow pendulum across a wide arc. This year, Ms. Goldson is the product of an increasingly competitive, narrowly-focused, goal-oriented pedagogy that we will, for the sake of argument, say is at or near the far right of that arc. In 1978, when I graduated from high school, the pendulum was at or near the far left of the arc, poised to begin a swing back that has taken more than 30 years.

Back then, we weren't so goal oriented as process minded. Our classrooms were filled with bean bag chairs and progressive educators and choices. I took photography as a science, and the only requirement for changing that course from an art credit to a science credit was that I had to learn the names of the chemical formulas we used in developing photos. That's it, just the names. I could have gone further, questioned the theory behind using light and photo sensitive materials to capture images on film in a negative format and then transforming it again into a positive image on paper. I could have, but I didn't. It wasn't a requirement, and while I was fascinated to see an image emerge in the red light and chemical brew of the dark room, it never occurred to me to ask how or why.

My point here, and it harkens back to Ms. Goldson's earlier statement, is that we are indeed all individuals with our own learning curves and drives and levels of ambition. I think Ms. Goldson is lucky to begin questioning her education as early as she has, because her questions and curiosity will take her far. I believe that the goal of education should be to learn how to learn — not what to think, but how to think.

Ms. Goldson lamented in her speech that education — and work afterward — is a form of slavery. She claims to be "a human being, a thinker, an adventurer – not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition – a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker."

I part ways with Ms. Goldson on her assertion that education equals enslavement. Baron Henry Peter Brougham (1778-1868) argued that education actually precludes slavery: "Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave."

Her naivety is forgivable (she's just a teen, after all), but it shows itself most clearly in her definition and understanding of work. So, Ms. Goldson is an adventurer, not a worker. I wish her good luck with that and would like to talk to her when her first rent payment comes due or when she breaks her leg on one of her adventures and doesn't have health insurance. Despite it's bad rap, work doesn't have to be a four-letter word. The trick is to find value and worth in doing your work, even if it's only that it allows you to live as comfortably as you want to live and enjoy your time away from work. If you're lucky, you can pay your bills and feed your family. If you're really lucky, work is more than that, but that can be enough.

Picasso once said: "Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working." I doubt that doodling in class has led anyone to become a great artist by the time of high school graduation. It may start you down a path and develop some rudimentary skills, but so does taking good notes and learning to take tests successfully. I agree that test scores should not be the goal of education, but learning to take meaningful notes, construct a coherent argument, and write an organized paper are fundamental skills for the student, just as learning the play of light against dark and understanding perspective are fundamental skills for the artist.

I could never have been valedictorian of my class. I got very good grades in high school, but I didn't work hard enough to be number one. I don't even know if we had a valedictorian. I did do well enough both in school and on standardized tests to get into an excellent college, where I struggled because I had not learned any study habits during high school. It wasn't until my junior year in college that I figured out how to study. And it wasn't until many years later, when I found myself sitting in the driveway to hear the end of a story on NPR that I really figured out that learning isn't something you do for 12 or 16 years of school. It's a life-long process.

It took me a long time to find my passion. Now, each day, I learn something new about writing and it spurs me to learn even more. I wish I had found this kind of inspiration when I was 18, but I wasn't ready. Inspiration may have shown up earlier, but I wasn't working at it. Sometimes I worry that it's too late, but I push those thoughts aside. They won't do me any good.

I also accept Ms. Goldson's challenge to her graduating classmates: "… do not forget what  went on these classrooms. Do not abandon those that come after you … We will break down the walls of corruption and let the garden of knowledge grow throughout America." I add only that we are all responsible for tending that garden. What say you? Leave your questions and comments here.

Thomas Jefferson on public education to A. Coray, 1823. ME 15:487

Thomas Jefferson,
public domain image

"The public education … we divide into three grades:

1. Primary schools, in which are taught reading, writing, and common arithmetic, to every infant of the State, male and female.
2. Intermediate schools, in which an education is given proper for artificers and the middle vocations of life; in grammar, for example, general history, logarithms, arithmetic, plane geometry, mensuration, the use of the globes, navigation, the mechanical principles, the elements of natural  philosophy, and as a preparation for the University, the Greek and Latin languages.
3. An University, in which these and all other useful sciences shall be taught in their highest degree; the expenses of these institutions are defrayed party by the public, and partly by the individuals profiting of them." 

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

Once I built a railroad, made it run, 

made it race against time.

Once I built a railroad; now it's done. 

Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once I built a tower, up to the sun, 

brick and rivet, and lime;

Once I built a tower, now it's done. 

Brother, can you spare a dime?

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? (1931), lyrics Yip Harburg

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who fundraise and those who are hit up by fundraisers. Seems everyone has a hand out these days. Magazine sales for two different schools. Pleas from WBEZ, my beloved local NPR station, to shorten the fall fundraising drive by pledging now. Dunning notices. Late fees. A plummeting Dow. Yikes, man.

I think we are all more than a little frightened about money these days, and with good reason. The Dow fell 777 points on Monday, the biggest one-day drop ever — bigger than the Black Tuesday that precipitated the Great Depression; bigger than the 684 points it fell on the first trading day after 9/11. I like to joke that a falling stock market doesn't affect me — I'm too broke to own any stock — but the fact is, we are all affected by the economic mess in which we find ourselves. 

I'm no financial genius (huge understatement here), but there is one investment I know will never fail: education. If we want our children to make a difference in this world, to build a clean, cost-efficient public transportation system and make it run, to build a green tower using the power of the sun, we must support public education.

This post is a response to my first Chicago Moms Blog challenge, in which those of us who contribute have been asked to write about DonorsChoose.org. Last year's challenge helped more than 75,000 students in high-need public schools. I have mixed feelings about hocking my readers for a donation, so I offer this post as information only. I've checked out the group and it seems pretty cool. One of the most interesting aspects of it is that it allows donors to choose which specific educational project they would like to support. 

This is the time of year when many of us count our blessings, as well as our pennies. As you you count yours, if you find a few extra pennies under the cushions, considering passing them on to a cause you support. It's free to comment or make a pitch for your favorite cause by clicking here. 

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