This is a snappy phrase which captures the impact of Campbell/Goodhart/Strathern’s law (see https://chosen-path.org/2026/01/06/how-code-modelling-eats-the-world-and-why-its-important-for-us-all/).
One of my occasional excursions into ‘origins’ (https://stream.syscoi.com/2021/04/18/a-fools-quest-for-the-first-use-of-the-phrase-systems-thinking/ and elsewhere other famous quotes (https://chosen-path.org/2024/09/03/transformational-power-of-action/ springs to mind).
The earliest two I can find are from journals and unfortunately the whole pages are not visible:
Modern Photography – Volume 22 – Page 38
1957 · Snippet view
Justice of the Peace volume 162, 2000
So I’m giving the prize pro tem to a piece I like (very much aligned with my dad’s thinking and writing as a headteachert himself):
TES Magazine (the Times Educational Supplement)
17th November 2006
Colin Foster, King Henry VIII school in Coventry
Who starts:
“I was listening the other day to a Radio 4 programme about the damaging effects of target-setting in the health service. It strengthened my feeling that many of the same problems are evident in schools. “
https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/targets-miss-point-0
Can you do better?
chosen path 