It's clouded here because the article knows why the fence is there. Specifically - the fence (scissors, drawing, coloring) are tools we use in primary school to strengthen the childrens' hands and strengthen their fine motor skills.
When they're older and attempting to write a long essay they don't get muscle cramps and break their concentration. Instead, they... simply write. We don't hand-write anymore but we also no longer have the
don't remove the fence until you know why it was built is a simple, useful thought experiment. but it doesn't mean "don't remove the fence until you know about every single side effect that it could possibly have had since it was built, including things the builder could never have possibly imagined, and fully accounted for the consequences of each of those effects."
if you sell the bull in chesterton's field, then you can tear down chesterton's fence. whether or not that lets the coyotes access the neighbour's chickens isn't part of the metaphor.
It's a teaching prop that (imho) tells people to look at things as if they are wrong- rather than assume they're right.
I've never seen somebody propose it as a formal debate concept- but rather a perspective in which to enter the debate.
I think you have that exactly backwards. Meaning... the "prop" would be to assume the fence-builder was right, not wrong, and you need to find the why before you can remove the obviously-dumb-thing-with-visible-no-purpose.
In this case I happen to agree with the author’s premise: it seems clear that kids have a developmental need to interact with the world physically. But I’m not comfortable with a made-up blockquote that slightly twists the meaning of the original parable.
ETA: I’m not accusing the author of the Medium article of fabricating their quote; their source may have changed in the interim. I’m just saying someone made up this story, there’s no apparent source for it, and it’s not a good representation of the principle it purportedly explains.