Criticism is No Vice
By TMP 43rd Editorial Board
The age of affirmation is upon us. The phrase “let people enjoy things” is now a common defense against introspection, nearly as popular in Forbes Dining Hall as it is on social media. Broadly, a modernist outlook that exalts the individual has inducted the slogan “All feelings are valid” into our cultural canon.
Somewhere along the line, though, this attitude has metastasized into something deeply troubling: the notion that all opinions deserve equal affirmation, and that to challenge someone’s thinking is to attack their personhood, informed by their “lived experiences.” Emotional support is now thought to require intellectual surrender. While emotional experiences indeed deserve acknowledgement, intellectual honesty cannot be predicated on the disavowal of criticism; it demands that we distinguish between validating feelings and rubber-stamping flawed thinking. Substantive relationships require the courage to criticize.
We believe that all feelings, as subjective experiences, are valid in that they exist and deserve recognition. If you feel hurt, anxious, or angry, no one can tell you otherwise. Nonetheless, opinions are meant to be assertions subject to evidence, logic, and scrutiny, and by treating all opinions as equally unassailable, we infantilize one another. Opinions are not immune to scrutiny simply on account of their sincerity. Criticism, properly understood, can signal intellectual respect: taking someone seriously enough to actually engage with their ideas, rather than patronizing them with unconditional affirmation.
Refusing to challenge each other’s thinking does not equal kindness; rather, we signal that the other person does not merit genuine engagement. This conflation points to the normalization of the phrases “your truth” and “my truth,” worldviews informed solely by experience unbuttressed by hard-fought thought. One’s “truth” now shields against criticism: how could you question an experience? The sleight of hand here lies in the fact that critical argument does not question “lived experiences” themselves but rather the prescriptive conclusions drawn from those experiences.
One’s “truth” should not serve as an impenetrable fortress that shuts out the collaborative process of refining ideas through dialogue and challenge. In today’s landscape, “authenticity” has become a hollow buzzword and a license to assert without defending. However, not all opinions are well-construed, and only by accepting this notion do we actually begin to push each other to think harder about our beliefs and actions, and to become better people in the process.
Our call for honest and courageous criticism extends to faculty members, too. That some Milton classes boast the expectation that A+’s are given out as participation trophies further reflects a critique-averse community. To our faculty readers: it is a greater vice to demand too little of your students than to demand too much. Although the post-COVID academic landscape has not been kind to teachers who carry the torch of criticism and challenge, extinguishing it altogether would be a disservice to students. In our experience, the classes that have inspired and shaped us the most were by no means easy to ace, and we suspect most teachers would reflect similarly about their own education.
Similarly, students mirror teachers’ perceived level of commitment to their classes. Absent criticism, classes can slip into apathy, which spills beyond the classroom into the Milton community writ large. This apathy forces already-strong students to associate passion with busywork while setting up students who need the most learning to flounder in their future academic pursuits, which are often simply their next Milton course. We charge the community to dispense with the conception that stringent grading and high expectations are “harsh” or “unfair.” American education is in crisis, but the time has not yet come to surrender to stagnation and declare that today’s learners could never live up to a standard that was once commonplace.
Ultimately, in an era that treats criticism as inherently harmful, we must reclaim it as a virtue. The seemingly kindest approach of endless validation—from our peers, our adults, and our students—is condescending and stunts the life-changing growth about which Milton alums often speak so fondly. Embrace the friction of honest agreement; the courage to give criticism breeds the humility to grow from it.