If you give a man a fish...

I got into a fight with my father today. He’s a social worker, and I used to think that he spent his days helping people and making the world a better place. The more I find out about his job now that I’m an adult, I am re-evaluating my position. There are people in the world that legitimately need help and don’t get it, and people who should be helped who don’t get helped because of a lack of resources and manpower. Unfortunately, it seems that most of his work revolves around taking individuals whose only problem is a lack of judgment and handing out resources to them. To call in the ancient metaphor, he’s not teaching people to fish, he’s handing them very expensive fish and then has to hand them some more fish tomorrow.

Take for instance one of his former clients. This individual (let’s call him ‘Jeff’) has what I might term a lethal lack of judgment. He has a wide variety of medical problems, but all of them seem to be self caused. He chose to start taking narcotics, got himself addicted, and now fancies himself to be an individual with a powerful will for having kicked the habit after only 4 involuntary trips to month-long detox retreats, lots of Narcotics Anonymous meetings (where they taught him that he can’t control his desires), and after picking up an addiction to alcohol. After AA meetings and another few detox trips (and picking up an addiction to caffeine and smoking), he thinks that he’s living a clean life. Never mind the pack a day smoking habit, and three dozen cans of Mountain Dew each week. Never mind that he eats an entire package of pepperoni and a dozen glazed doughnuts each week. Never mind that at every single chance, he seizes the opportunity to throw back a handful of pain pills and be stoned for a few days. He has digestive problems, but refuses to believe that his "all junk food diet" has anything to do with it. He imagines that his tongue is swelling up and will choke him and makes people drive him to the emergency room where they find absolutely nothing wrong with him.

Well, my father hooked him up with state agencies that bought him lots of free things. They gave him $650 in income each month, plus money for his housing, a cell phone with lots of minutes, money to buy cigarettes (yes, my tax dollars go to pay for his addictions), and to top it all off, they got him a laptop computer. Ostensibly, the reason for this was that he was going to go back to school and get his life back on track. He was supposed to enroll in classes starting in the summer. He forgot about school and got high and missed the deadline to enroll. So he kept the free stuff and was told to enroll in classes for the fall. Well, he did, and attended about half of a freshman semester. But he forgot about school and got high, and had to withdraw from the university to avoid failing out. Well, again, he’s kept the free stuff, and has resolved to enroll in classes for the spring. I have dim hopes of that. The longer he goes without actually having to enroll in classes, study, and pass his classes, the more and more it looks like he's just accepting government handouts without any responsibility.

Tonight, my father told me about his intervention on behalf of another young man. This young man is a Senior in high school. He’s been tested and has a vocabulary that is above the level that he should be at when he graduates from high school, but has the math skills of a 4th grader. Math skills are important in modern society, even if you don’t end up in a job that requires intensive mathematical work. Balancing checkbooks, doing basic calculations when buying and selling goods, and doing basic repairs around the house... Stop and think about it. This young man can’t order carpet for a house he might buy, won’t grasp the dimensions of an 850 square foot apartment without actually seeing it, and can't tell you what a quarter of a half is mentally. My immediate thought was that before graduation, this young man should be held back perhaps a full year for intensive mathematical tutoring. We should teach him how to to handle basic mathematical tasks so that he can be a self-sufficient member of society. Instead of this, my father is helping him to get an exemption from the requirements of mathematical proficiency so that he can graduate from high school with his peers.

Maybe I’m thinking about these things incorrectly, but it seems to be that a high school diploma means something. Society has said (through the state) that in order for a person to be minimally functional in modern society, they must attain a minimum level of proficiency in several different subject areas, like Math, History, Reading, and Science. A Diploma from an accredited high school signifies to the world that the person holding the diploma has reached those minimums. What is the point of handing him a diploma if he has not attained those minimums?

My father countered that the young man has no plans of going into a business which requires frequent use of math. The young man wants to become a music teacher, and ignoring the inherently mathematical nature of dealing with music, let’s stop and be realistic. How many times did I change my mind about what I wanted to do with my life between high school and where I am now after two bachelor’s degrees and halfway through a graduate degree? A dozen? More? Hell, I'm not even sure I know what I want to do now. I’m fairly sure that my experience isn’t unusual. What are the odds that a high school student knows what he wants to do in a real sense, and even more, who’s to say that he’ll be good at what he wants to do or can find work in his chosen field? Giving him the fish for today and ensuring that he’ll graduate without reaching the state-mandated minimums only ensures that I (and the rest of the taxpayers) will have to give him a fish tomorrow. Personally, I’d much rather teach him to fish.