Academics at Milton in 2008

I recently stumbled across a battered old cardboard box lying in the corner of a garage. Curiosity got the best of me, and in it I discovered the remnants of my Class II year at Milton. Humidity had taken its toll on the English essays that had spewed forth from an old dot matrix printer, and the rust on the binder rings made it hard to flip through the scrawled notes on the Civil War and Reconstruction, limits and derivatives. For two decades, the physical remains of that year had been rotting away. But something from that year rests secure in my mind, shaping the ways in which I think and read and speak. So what is it about my Milton Academy education that has resisted time’s ravages? What is it about the classroom experience at Milton, the defining experience at Milton, that endures?

Such questions are not for the nostalgic alone. Those of us who teach Milton students must still distinguish the fundamentals from the fads, the transcendent from the trendy. Making those decisions seems simple at times, daunting at others, but whenever the task seems overwhelming,

I return to principles that extend across the curriculum, penetrating every academic discipline—students must leave this place able to explore enthusiastically, reason critically, and communicate clearly. Only a rigorous, dynamic program ensures that they will.

By necessity, that program must begin with language, broadly understood. Generations of Milton’s English teachers have insisted that their students master the principles of grammar, and despite the culture’s current embrace of imprecision and informality, Milton’s teachers resolutely, often joyfully, continue to teach those principles. They are not soldiers in some cultural battle, ferociously defending past practice against innovation. Rather, they recognize that learning grammar, like learning vocabulary, liberates students. Understanding how words fit together to create meaning allows one to read with sensitivity, appreciate nuance, and recognize multiple meanings. The complicated language that once obscured knowledge and beauty instead introduces a reader to new dimensions of the human experience. The world on the page comes alive. Thus, English Workshop remains a staple of the Class IV English curriculum, essential preparation for subsequent deep readings of Milton, Melville, and Morrison.

In other disciplines, too, language matters. We still require Class IV students to explore a wide range of the arts—visual arts, performing arts, and music—because we recognize that a student who, for example, begins to understand the language of music, its structure, its texture, its complexity, can discover once-hidden truths about love, or hope, or suffering. In the math classroom, signs and symbols can make mysterious phenomena seem simple and rational—but only when students understand the way in which those signs work together, the grammar, if you will, of math. In the Chinese or French classroom, of course, the teaching of language may appear to be a teacher’s sole focus. Yet the study of another language does more than provide an alternative form of communication. Rather, learning new languages provides the basis for understanding other cultures. In a world of constant, complex cultural exchange, studying language thus becomes increasingly important, not because English will lose its global reach, but because foreign languages provide the entry for deeper understanding.

As they discover new knowledge, Milton students enjoy many small epiphanies, but those moments, no matter how powerful, are not sufficient signs that Milton has completed its work. After those flashes of insight, Milton students must still remain hungry, eager to learn more; they must make intellectual exploration habitual. We in turn must encourage that habit, following the lead of the science department, which puts exploration at the heart of every one of its core courses. All students in those classes must complete a “DYO,” a “design-your-own” experiment requiring students to define and then test ways to explore scientific phenomena. Before they can explore, those students must pose questions worthy of study; they must have a sense of what they seek. Some students, mucking about in hopes that they will stumble on a subject worthy of investigation, ask many, many questions. At the moment, such incessant questioning can seem frustrating, but that questioning fosters a pioneer spirit, the very kind of intellectual approach that endures.

A similar search for answers defines another rite of passage, the United States History research paper. This assignment, often the stuff of legend, demands that students define their own path for exploring the past. They cannot rely on a single source; they cannot assume a single, simple answer. Some students flounder, at least temporarily, while others flourish. In the broadest sense, though, no student can fail, regardless of the quality of the final paper, if that student has scoured sources, tested and rejected hypotheses, and generated an even longer list of questions.

To make exploration productive and to make discoveries meaningful, students must learn to reason critically. Encouraging students to ask ill-conceived questions and rewarding them for sincere but incoherent answers serves no one well. Instead, students must learn to distinguish hasty assertions from careful arguments, and just as we give students practice exploring, we must give them practice reasoning. We do not wish to train well-instructed parrots, students who merely restate another’s wisdom with unusual eloquence, nor do we wish to foster a culture of intellectually empty but fiery debate. So how do we avoid these traps? First, the context for learning must inspire constant exchange. The persistent but shallow critic should face, literally, a room full of skeptics who will push that sloppy thinker to revise and expand his thinking. The classrooms in the new science building will reflect this necessity. Those spaces will integrate labs, places where students explore, with areas in which students can gather around a table, asking one another questions, helping one another find answers and refine conclusions. Indeed, most every Milton classroom is designed to be a space for constructive exchange, one that allows students to admit uncertainty and requires students to defend conclusions. Gently but vigorously, we push one another away from weak reasoning.

The tasks that we ask students to complete also develop reasoning skills. Class IV students, for example, must write, among other papers, a critical essay and a personal narrative. Though different in many respects, both assignments require students to use evidence—a text in one case, experience in the other—to convey a message that a reader, even the most critical one, will find compelling. Moreover, in every core history course, Milton students must write a research paper, as we insist that each student demonstrate the ability to define an original argument and defend that argument with evidence. Lab reports serve a comparable function, and in arts courses, students must also experiment, constantly making choices. Two years ago, I had the opportunity to work with a colleague in the performing arts department on an oral history project. This teacher asked each student both to contribute to the construction of the script and to provide suggestions for the staging of the final performance. As he led the class through the exercise, he insistently but patiently asked students to defend their choices, to explain why successful elements worked, and to explore why less successful elements failed. The building of that performance, like the construction of an essay, required constant, careful reflection.

The very tools that so often promote clear thinking also encourage effective communication. Every teacher discovers that teaching an idea forces one to develop a deeper understanding of that idea. The underlying principle here—clear communication requires the precise definition of one’s thoughts—operates for students, too. Thus, our insistence that students explain their thinking in class and on paper stems in part from a belief that practicing communication, written and oral, provides practice in reasoning. Yet we encourage effective writing and speaking for another reason. We recognize that knowledge locked away from our students does them no good. We also recognize that knowledge and innovations locked in one student’s head deprives everyone access to that student’s inspiration and insight. So when we ask students to articulate their own ideas, we do so both because we have great faith in their capacity as individual thinkers, and because we all suffer when we do not share our thoughts with one another.

If we build our curriculum around exploration, reasoning, and communication, we can avoid many tiresome debates. Are we traditional or progressive? Choose either label—a student who explores the world eagerly will embrace the study of Vergil with the same verve with which she studies contemporary politics in our new climate change course. She will look forward and backward with equal excitement, and if she can reason critically, she will draw meaningful conclusions from both exercises. Twenty years from now, whether she is a banker, a professor, or a painter—or all three—she will still pursue new knowledge ceaselessly, and she will share her discoveries with the world enthusiastically. Like so many of us, she will have learned enduring lessons at Milton.

David Ball ’88, Academic Dean