Don't Judge A Fish By Its Ability To Climb A Tree, Alan José Chateloin Guerra

APRIL 2021

There's no real evidence that Mr. Eistein wrote the famous quote: "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life believing that is stupid". It doesn't appear in the comprehensive collection of quotations "The Ultimate Quotable Einstein” from Princeton University Press. The truth is that had been ascribed to him because of how he had been in his whole life. The reason is that Einstein had a learning disability. He wasn't a good student at the beginning, therefore nobody would wait that this dyslexic kid Albert Einstein would eventually be the intellectual icon of the modern age. Returning to the quote, in 1999 a fable that is thought to have inspired the quote was widely circulated, though it supposedly originated back in 1940 at the pen of George Reavis, then Superintendent of Cincinnati Public Schools. The fable told the history of an "animal school", where all the animals have to improve a skill that they aren't good at or in which they have little bit chance of success.

The quote mentioned has a big allegorical framework which is that the fish is specialized to swim, and its ability to climb a tree doesn't exist or rudimentary.This alludes to a person that has not the ability that the education system is requiring him or her to do that they don't have the skill to do it like others who possess the ability. So many objects had evolved through the time, but the only thing that keeps the same it's the education system. If we enter today in a class of any college, institute, or university; with great probability, we feel like traveling in time and being in a classroom from 150 years ago. Neither the form nor the content has changed much.

It means that the organization of the class tables is the same as then, the teacher is still in the same place as before, conducting his master class before students who don't question the information and knowledge they receive from him, as if from absolute truth and unquestionable. They continue giving the same subjects and syllabi but with different names than half a decade ago. The education system still qualifying the students with multiple choice exams that mustn't be used as said from Frederick J. Kelly: "These tests are so crude to be used". In conclusion, we can't judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, because we are asking it an ability that it doesn't have, for example:Albert Eistein was not considered a genius in his beginnings.