Chesterton's Fence

There are plenty of laws that come up in discussions of modern education reform. In particular, we talk about Campbell’s Law and Goodheart’s Law, both of which focus on the idea that once you focus on mastering a measurement, that measurement becomes useless (e.g. once you organize your school around getting better test scores, those tests scores cease to provide any real useful data).

But there’s another fine model, known as Chesterton’s Fence. It comes from author G. K. Chesterton, and the idea is simple--

Don’t tear down a fence until you know why someone put it up.

Just because you don’t understand why a particular process, procedure, or tradition is in place, that doesn’t mean you can remove it without ill effect. Not until you understand what the original purpose was, and what removal or change would do to that original purpose.

Education has been plagued with reformsters who want to see changes, and they want to see them Right Now. They rarely want to try to understand how aspects of the system were put in place, even if there is history to show that systems are in place in response to failed versions of that same reform in the past (check out works by Adam Laats and Audrey Watters to see historical reform failures laid out in familiar relief).

Individual schools also suffer from new administrators who make decisions based on the understanding that “kept things running as they always have” isn’t nearly as sexy on a resume as “change agent.” They will be quick to pick out fences they can tear down and may not even stick around long enough to build anything in their place.

Chesterton’s Fence does not suggest that no fence should ever be taken down; it may very well turn out that removing the fence is a great idea. But when you are contemplating the removal of a fence, it is wise to know what problem the fence was solving, what the current status of that problem is, and what might happen if the fence is removed. Some unanticipated results occur precisely because nobody took the time to try anticipating them. Nobody took the time to ask why the fence is there or what might happen when the fence is blown up.