An (edu) fad's purpose is what it does

Stafford Beer, a systems theorist, regularly claimed that a system's purpose is what it does. There was no point claiming its purpose was what it consistently failed to do. In this post, I want to explore the idea in connection with educational fads: the fad's purpose is what it does (and not what its authors thought it would do).

Key assumption: A system isn't a set of procedures to follow (like a "behaviour system"). It's a group of things whose interactions bring about a distinct behaviour. That could be cells in an organ, humans in a classroom, or all the interacting elements that make up a school. It could also be a whole education system.

So what is the connection with educational fads? We need to differentiate educational systems from other types we're familiar with.

Many systems we interact with have been designed to behave as anticipated. Smartphones, microwaves, laptops, and cars, are all designed to be trivial, reliable, and guaranteed to do only what we expect (Foerster 1971). Here the phrase fits intuitively, the system's purpose is what it does, because otherwise it would be broken.

For example, when we get a new car, we may have to adjust our interactions but quickly learn how the car will behave. Whatever the input (e.g. pressing the brake a certain way), we can predict the output (the car's response). In other words, when I press the brake I don't change the car's internal configuration. By releasing the brake, the system returns to how it was and my future inputs will produce the same outputs.

Beer's interest* lay in nontrivial systems, which rarely seem to respond in the same way. The best examples are any systems involving interacting humans, like classrooms, whole schools, or whole education systems. Educational fads influence these systems.

Unlike the car, the interactions involved in teaching change the students in some way. They perceive something, whatever that is, and their thinking varies. This influences their future responses in unforeseeable ways and makes continual adaptation the only viable option (see Difference Maker).

The same can be said of policies that schools enact for their teachers. Once announced to staff, you can't precisely predict what interactions will follow. Something will emerge, but you'll just have to watch, find out, and adapt accordingly. Likewise for lessons, which is why I think management shouldn't mandate precise teaching activities.

And, of course, it applies to whole education systems and emergent fads. In the last 15 years, social media has vastly increased teacher communication. Fads can spread throughout a system more rapidly.

When fads emerge across the system, I've observed that the original drivers have expressed surprise. The output wasn't what they'd had in mind. The term "lethal mutation" has become a popular tool for distancing the influencer from the "errant" practitioners.

This response hints, maybe, at an ontology – a personal belief in the way the world is. A belief that all systems are trivial; that all systems can be engineered and assigned a purpose (lest it be faulty). In other words, a belief in the controllability of systems, without acknowledging the system's agency to behave in its own way. With this ontology, people can make bold claims and attempt to act on a system rather than with it (Pickering 2025).

For example, "teaching is simple, you just have to do XYZ", which is later mandated to be enacted with fidelity. Or "If you don't use mini-whiteboards, you are willingly reducing the learning in your classroom" as if this were fact. In other words, "If only teachers would do such and such technique at such and such time, then the system would be better. It's entirely predictable". The ontology of controllability fosters arrogance.

This isn't to say that we can't affect a nontrivial system positively. Systems theory and Beer's phrase, the purpose of the system is what it does, remind us to not believe we precisely know the outcomes of our actions. They invite us into an ontology of unknowability in which reality is always in the making (Pickering 2010). (Applied to teaching? see Difference Maker).

Not long ago a drive emerged against "fun" lessons, in which an exciting activity was foregrounded to entice students into learning. The push was to reverse the process by foregrounding the subject knowledge itself and rid the focus on entertaining, but distracting, activities.

Clearly, lessons shouldn't be entertainment; we should plan to thrill our students with our subjects. Invite them into our communities to learn fascinating and interesting things. Wasn't this the purpose?

Yet, soon followed the argument that students had to accept boring lessons – not everything in school can be engaging and some things just have to be learnt and practiced. Now I hear ever more reports of widespread boring lessons. Often, it seems, following a script of: teacher does, students do, and endless quizzes. Taught to students, not taught with them. Our natural urge – to converse, make meanings and inferences – subdued.

An ontology of controllability brings the impulse to pin systems down like an insect to a cork board. While learning through entertainment didn't work well, I doubt regular boring lessons, delivered with fidelity, will either. Unless, of course, the students themselves enact a culture of curiosity-led-excellence towards study; they pursue meaning making whatever the teaching style.

This brings us back to our phrase: a fad's purpose is what it does. Not what it was supposed to do, nor what it's failed to do. Because we can't impose our will on an educational system, whether it's evidence-based or not. We must make decisions and act, but rather than reporting "unintended" consequences, we should accept that there are only unknowable responses. We should expect and invite continual surprises, be it with a class, school or national system. The phrase, then, invites us to be humble, and careful, when announcing our perspectives. It invites us to act with systems, rather than act on them. Learn more about systems theory in education, in my book, Difference Maker. Download the first chapters of my books here.

*Beer used the term "exceedingly complex systems" which are so complex that trying to map their parts to precisely understand the overall performance is ultimately futile. The brain and the firm being his prime examples, but we could easily add schools here too.

References

Beer used the phrase "the purpose of the system is what it does" in speeches later in life, but maybe his best known work is:

Beer, S. 1972. Brain of the Firm. UK: The Penguin Press.

Foerster, H.von. 1971/2003. “Perception of the Future and the Future of Perception.” In Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition, edited by Heinz von Foerster, 199–210. USA: Springer-Verlag.

Foerster, H.von. 2014. The Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has No Name: Seven Days with Second-Order Cybernetics. Edited by A Müller and K.H. Müller, Translated by: E Rooks and M Kasenbacher. Ebook Edition: Fordham University Press.

Pickering, A. 2010. The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future. London: University of Chicago Press.

Pickering, A. 2025. Acting with the World: Agency in the Anthropocene. USA: Duke University Press Books.