The ‘Do It for Me’ Culture or Teaching People to Fish

Early one Sunday morning I was watching a snippet of a recorded talk given by one of my favorite marketing professionals, Dan Kennedy, and his words struck a particularly unpleasant chord in me. He was talking about providing information materials to his industry and he stated that, “the trend …is ‘do it for them’ versus ‘teach them’.” The reason this bothered me so much was that the truth in his statement goes so contrary to what I spend most of my waking time doing.

I’m an educator by nature. One of the greatest joys in watching a developing person who I’ve “taught” is to see that person take what I’ve imparted and make it his or her own. My philosophy of teaching is that I’m supposed to make myself obsolete. If I’ve done a good job, the person or people I’ve taught can go and do it themselves – whatever ‘it’ may be.

Moreover, the very foundation of the disabilities consulting company I co-own and run with my business partner, George Rathbone is ‘teaching people to fish’. Even our somewhat whimsical logo is of a young person fishing; designed with precisely this idea in mind. The value of giving people tools to become self-sufficient is central to the design of every program we develop, every curricula or individual plan of care we design, every management or staff training course we put together, and every management system we recommend.

I’ve been contemplating the impaired ability to take ownership and responsibility for what happens in their lives that we convey to the generation we are raising through the public school system[i]. I also see that our tendency to look outside ourselves for “blame” keeps us from learning to ask “how might I make this situation better?”

Well, whatever the current trend may be, I intend to continue focusing on my goal of ongoing personal growth and development and I’ll encourage those I ‘teach’ to do the same. It is the continued passing on of this forward-looking attitude and approach that allows me to remain hopeful that the focus in educating one another will turn more strongly towards ‘teaching them to fish’.

[i]Flury, Jan. “Why Reforms Don’t Work.” EducationNews.org. 2 April 2001. 3 July 2005.
Hutchinson, Peter. “Learning Will Become Interactive.” StarTribune.com. 1996. 3 July 2005.