Can we also talk about how this quote makes just no sense in this case...?
The quote implies that you don't have to give them fish, you can just teach them to fish, because they can reasonably learn to fish in an hour or so. They're unlikely to starve in that timeframe.
Kids on the other hand go to school to learn to 'fish', i.e. earn their own money, for more than a decade. You can't just say nah, they don't need food, we're teaching them how to earn it, when that teaching process takes magnitudes longer than it takes for a kid to starve to death.
Fair enough. I'm guessing, the lady using the quote had the same implication in mind, though? Otherwise, I'm really not sure what point she was trying to make.
I was curious so I looked it up, seems like it started floating around in the late 1800's, but realy evolved to it's current form in the mid 1900's (though it's always attributed to being a much older proverb.)