Differences Unite Us

At Milton, we continually ask ourselves what it means to educate young people, effectively, about differences. We must do this, and do it well. Not only is it part of our mission—we “embrace diversity,” our mission statement says—but also, we are close to young people during their most formative years. The messages they internalize now are the messages they will reckon with for a lifetime.

However, as we struggle from time to time to weigh our reaction to an incident—a public insult, an encounter with harassment, insensitivity in dialogue—and to seize the teaching moment, we are tempted to complain: “But we’ve already dealt with this. Why did this happen?”

On October 13, our weekly Wednesday second period assembly was devoted, as many assemblies have been in the past, to the challenges of honoring diversity in our community and in the world. Neither the first nor the last in Milton’s continuous effort to educate teenagers about respect for differences among people, the assembly took a new approach to communicating the impact of hurtful language — this time in response to two messages scratched on bathroom walls. Upper School Principal Hugh Silbaugh set the meeting up, noting that at Milton we believe our differences are positive, and connect us, rather than separate us; and that we believe in the exchanges of ideas and the integrity and wholeness of each individual. “We are all diminished when one of us violates our commitment to respect for others,” he said.

During this assembly students sat facing each other, looking into their peers’ faces, and participated: Group by group, students stood, to indicate their various religious affiliations. In similar fashion, Heather Flewelling, director of student multicultural programs, guided an exercise whereby students stood to identify the fact that they had experienced isolation or alienation through hurtful language, actions or writing. Witnessing the fact that actions have impacts on people we know as friends—seeing the human face of disrespect, callousness, or casual insult—is a powerful tool.

Adding to the rich exchange of this assembly were messages from Ed Snow, interfaith chaplain and Centre House dorm parent, and Rachel Klein, college counselor, Robbins House dorm parent and advisor to the Jewish Student Union. We turned to students, and asked them what they would do. Their answers, written on cards, will be the basis for subsequent efforts. In the culminating section of the assembly, Class I student Sarah Pulit, co-head of Common Ground (the umbrella organization that brings together all Milton’s culture and identity groups) spoke. She gathered together all the students who participate in these culture and identity groups, indicating the large number of student leaders involved in promoting awareness, understanding, and appreciation of differences: cultural, ethnic, racial, religious, personal – or in sexual orientation. The students invited others to join them in continuing the conversation begun that morning, in the form of a “town meeting” on Thursday afternoon in Straus.

As we implement various strategies to teach about difference, we are aware of the fact that each year we are talking to different children. Not only do we welcome new students every September, but also each child changes dramatically over his or her teenage years. We have learned from recent brain research that the capacity for understanding, for generalizing, for restraining impulses and considering consequences is less a matter of IQ level and more a matter of biological development.

Bringing home an idea or working to instill a core value is not something done once, expertly, for all time. Each year a child brings a different set of personal resources to observe and to think about people who are different from him or herself.

Students can one day be linear, concrete thinkers, focused on the literal fact in front of them and unable to transfer a fact to a concept to a pattern of concepts. Later, they can understand complexity, build and appreciate metaphors, or use concepts to build a big-picture view. We must speak effectively to all these students, at whatever the stage of their development, and we must speak frequently. The process of educating about difference, therefore, is cyclical and never ending. We are committed to the task.

[BACK TO CENTRE CONNECTION]