Let Us Make Mistakes

By TMP Editorial Board

Before the age of nanny cams and Life360, parenting was a hands-off affair. We’re sure the adults reading this editorial remember being left alone after school, free to make sense of the world around them. 

Yet this practice of laissez-faire childcare has all but disappeared, as a new generation of hyperattentive parenting spurs many parents to become ever more involved in their children’s lives. Kids’ daily schedules are more packed than ever: school ends, and we’re thrown into a dizzying series of sports practices, music lessons, and even (gasp!) tutoring sessions. Some of us at Milton should be proof enough of this phenomenon. After all, how many of us actually initiated our entry into the world of private prep-school education?

As we are pushed to achieve more, there’s barely enough room in our timetables for us to catch our breath, let alone our parents; this problem has become so extreme that the U.S. Surgeon General issued a rare public health warning about the stressors of modern parenting.

And at a school like Milton, one that often takes on the role of a surrogate parent, this wave of rigorous oversight has infiltrated more than just our scheduled time. 

When alumni return to campus, they tell stories of the glory days—tales of crowding the cemetery and driving down Centre Street with music blasting. Even Dr. Callen has shared fond memories of a midnight dorm swap between the girls of Goodwin and the boys of Hallowell. 

For today’s Milton students, however, these experiences seem like distant fantasies.

Incredibly, the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have brought more changes in policy than in members of the administration. The end of dorm sleepovers, the rise of grade inflation, the mandate on open doors during room visitation…all these shifts seem to have come in the name of removing any obstacle that may derail us from being our best, from achieving academic, extracurricular, collegiate, and even moral success. 

We can’t help but wonder if we’ve lost something in this process—does this culture of regulation and risk management in fact undermine our development? 

Admittedly, these policy changes have justifications; plenty of students have, in the past, gamed and taken advantage of the very liberties that we now covet. We also acknowledge that not every Milton student has parents who encourage them in their college applications, check on their work, and push them toward extracurriculars. There will always be a need for Milton to make sure that all students receive resources and structure. 

Certainly, an involved parent will always be better than a neglectful one; this reasoning holds true for Milton as well. But it’s one thing to give a kid a Band-Aid when they fall, and another entirely to wrap them in pillows for fear of their toppling over. While we understand that our parents and school want us to be safe and stick to behaviors that they condone, they also ought to realize that we must learn to make choices, and this process of individuation involves making decisions that our caretakers might disagree with. And while those choices may not work out, that doesn't mean they should always be prevented. If we aren’t given opportunities to make our own decisions, we’ll leave Milton fully unprepared for life beyond high school. We won’t have grown in the ways that truly matter, and our parents will have suffered for it too.

On some level, the purpose of adolescence is becoming; learning to weigh risks and be responsible for one's own actions is essential to such a project. How else are we supposed to be our own people?

Jason Yu