New Student Leaders, Old Learning Curves

While September is the official start of the school year, many Class II students have already assumed senior year responsibilities. We started preparations for the change before the March break. Meeting successive deadlines, Class II students have registered interest in becoming co-head monitors and serving in other elected positions. Some new leaders are already in place, others have started writing applications for leadership positions for clubs and organizations from Asian Society and Community Service to SECS board. Because most Class I students undertake spring projects during the first week in May, the next generation of leaders needs to be in place before the end of this month.

Greeting and celebrating a new corps of leaders brings to mind the roles faculty and administrators play in guiding and supporting these individuals who, collectively, set the tone of the Milton year. As adults, we need to remember that each new class cannot be expected to know the lessons we have taught to previous groups of students. In our courses, we start over again each year; we do not expect students to meet all the goals of the course in the first assignment. Even later in the year, we are not surprised or frustrated when students struggle with careful editing and proper research. We explain; we teach. Naturally, we hope that students will have learned from the deliberations and mistakes of those who went before them. Still, we know that many of us find it hard to learn from examples and need to develop understanding by our own trial and error.

The new student editorial boards that manage our publications face some of the most significant learning curves, as they grow to understand the limits of journalistic freedoms. Even more important is their gaining an understanding of how best to serve the community in which they publish. Sometimes, the larger mission gets lost in the desire to print the interesting and the controversial. As one of my colleagues pointed out to me, attempts at humor inspire the worst gaffes. Many of the examples of humor they see in popular culture are crude and cruel. Students often believe that the line between amusing and mean has shifted and we (adults) don’t understand.  We need to keep asking them questions: When is it fair to make a joke at someone else’s expense? If the person mentioned has approved the reference, does that remove all possible objections? We don’t object to literary references that are inaccessible to some readers; how does that relate to printing inside jokes? Do they belong in our newspapers? When inside jokes can be construed by others as unkind but are published nonetheless, the level of our discourse degrades. The tenor of public discussion in the adult world—print and electronic—exacerbates the problem. What models should they follow? The faculty advisors to the publications work hard to help our emerging journalists consider the ways in which readers’ reactions may differ from what publishers intended. In helping students develop good judgment, advisors sometimes allow them to make mistakes, and then hear the disappointment directly from readers. We seek not to censure or blame but to promote the idea that respect for others has a role in journalism as it does in all areas of our lives. In their hearts, our students know this and we can help them connect their values to their roles as emerging leaders in the School.

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