- GK Chesterton
Imagine you are walking through a field and come upon a fence. It looks old, and a few boards are missing. It's blocking your ability to get from one place to another in the field. You think about it for a minute and say, "I don't see any use for this fence. I'm going to help out by tearing it down." As you begin removing boards, you feel very proud of yourself for being smarter than whoever put this fence up and allowed it to remain for so long in this condition. You've made progress, removing a section about 6 feet wide when a bull comes charging through the gap. And, now, you realize why the fence was there. You were well intentioned, but you created a danger because you didn't consider one question. Why did someone take the time to put a fence here?
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We see this frequently in the world around us. Several years ago, the city I live in was kicking around the idea of banning the sale of kitchen garbage disposals. People's opinions on this matter of law inevitably came down to whether or not they used their own. There seemed to be no one amongst the people who did use them that was capable of imagining why anyone else would, and thus, were fine with them being banned. (If you are interested, this ended up not happening because our water sanitation system requires that there be something to feed on, so the city actually needed people to put food scraps in the drain.)
Social media is, of course, the best place to witness this phenomenon. People with little knowledge of any given situation have VERY strong opinions about what should be done and how things should change. There are many, for example, with heated views about the electoral college system, daylight savings time, or car emissions testing. While it is valid to have discussions examining whether or not these things should still be part of our lives in the 21st century, it is worth examining why something like the electoral college was established in the first place. It's not like the writers of our constitution wanted to make things as complicated as possible. They were trying to balance the needs of smaller, less populated states with those containing larger cities. If we are going to discuss eliminating it, we must ask ourselves if those conditions still exist. Only then is it appropriate to discuss potential replacements for the system. Why did we decide to start changing our clocks twice per year? There was some reason. It may no longer be necessary, but it is important to know what problem was being solved by it before we eliminate it.
Any organization where people gather in groups is subject to a well meaning person who wants to change things. They come and see something that doesn't make sense to them and propose changes. This isn't always a bad thing; sometimes we have become so set in our ways that we don't see solutions to problems (or sometimes even the problem itself). But if you are a new person in a place, it is worth listening to those who know the history.
I worked in the same school for 21 years. There are a lot of things that are nice about that, and one of them is that I carried institutional memory. For most things, not all, I knew what the reasoning was behind a policy or a procedure. Sometimes, a new person came in and said, "Why don't we do this?" My reply was often, "We tried that a few years ago. Here's why it didn't work." What the person was suggesting was logical. There was a reason we had tried it in the past. But not everything this logical works in every setting. It's important that we not limit our perspective.
This is a good conversation to have with students. They are, like us, often unaware of their limited perspective. They often have strong opinions about school policies, classroom procedures, or things their parents do. Part of helping them to mature isn't to dismiss them out of hand with a "rules are rules" attitude, but rather to talk through the reasons behind the issues. I remember once having a conversation in which I shared the student's opinion, but it was still important to show support for the administration. Since I am a science teacher, I brought it back to the idea that we draw conclusions based on available data but are open to changing our minds when new data is presented. I said to her, "Is it possible the administration knows something we don't?" Of course that was possible. "Might we think the way they do if we had that information?" This was good for both of us to consider.
Anytime you find yourself confused by a practice or policy, slow down and have the humility to ask yourself, "Why is this here?"
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