Teaching For the World They’ll Inherit

As the world grows increasingly complex, Milton continues teaching students to think critically, act ethically, and lead with confidence.

My fellow Milton alumni often ask me how the Milton of today has changed from the Milton we knew as students. I often respond that the school has evolved significantly, reminding them as well that schools like ours need to evolve. The world our children will inherit would have been unimaginable in 1988. 

Each year, I have the privilege of sharing some thoughts with Upper School students during our opening Convocation. This year, I began my speech by recalling the ethics course all Class III students were required to take back in the day. As some of you will remember, known simply as Ethics, the course met once a week with the beloved Mr. Cleveland, who also served as the school’s chaplain. 

Each week we gathered in Mr. Cleveland’s classroom, a kind of garret in the netherworld between Warren and Wigg halls. The buildings have since been redone, so it’s hard to pinpoint the exact location, but it was sort of halfway up an old staircase. Dark wood paneling and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves surrounded a ring of old wooden desks. 

After everybody had arrived and gotten settled, Mr. Cleveland would introduce the topic of the week. It might be the death penalty or abortion or euthanasia or the ethics of war. He asked us questions like, “Are there causes for which you would fight for your life? What would they be?” 

Often, we would read a short piece to ground our conversation. Sometimes there was a case study presenting an ethical dilemma. Regardless of the prompt, our only job for the next hour was to participate. 

We were pushed not only to clarify our own thinking, but to listen to the opinions of others. Mr. Cleveland never told us what to think. Indeed, I have no idea how he felt on any of these topics. He simply pushed us to deepen our own thinking, often playing devil’s advocate to get us to dig more deeply, or asking us how our position squared with that of the person next to us. 

There were no grades in ethics. Imagine one person being told that they got an A and another a C: You’re ethical… you’re not. We simply had to show up and participate, which wasn’t hard. The conversations that started in Mr. Cleveland’s classroom often spilled over to the lunch tables. With every sophomore in the school taking the class—and every junior and senior a past participant—these dilemmas were commonly known and were sources for deep discussion. 

Milton doesn’t have a standalone ethics course these days, but we continue to take seriously our obligation to help raise ethical beings. Students regularly grapple with the topics of the day. And goodness, we have ample material. As I said to the students at Convocation, the number of ethical dilemmas that will need their attention has grown exponentially since the mid-’80s: technological advances, threats to democracy, geopolitical divides, the climate crisis, and political polarization. The challenges begin to feel endless. 

These days, much of our collective attention here at Milton is on the future. What experiences do our students need to have at Milton that will prepare them for the world they will inherit? To my mind, the liberal arts have never been more important. The critical-thinking, problem-solving and communication skills, combined with the meta-cognitive skills they need to embrace new challenges, remain at the center of our work. Our students will need this know-how when they head out into the world. That said, if we fail to prepare them for the challenges of the future, we will be abrogating our responsibilities as educators. 

Over the course of the past 12 months, we have been hard at work on Milton’s strategy for the future. If we consider the fact that today’s graduates will come of age in the middle of the 21st century, we would be foolhardy to ignore our evolving context. To that end, we have been thinking deeply about the experiences our students will need in order to address this disruptive world: How will humans interact with technology in the coming years? How do we preserve our democracy? How will we ensure the sustainability of our planet? 

Thankfully, we have a resource that most of our peer schools lack: proximity to a major metropolitan area. Located just one mile from the Boston city line, Milton’s setting is a differentiator. Another resource available to us is you, our alumni. As I tell students regularly, Milton alumni are already at work solving the pressing issues of the day. Tapping into the resources available right here in our alumni community provides opportunities for students not only to learn important content, but also to understand the agency they possess to make change. 

This issue of Milton Magazine highlights some of the members of our community doing this work. We look forward to learning from the experiences of so many of you in the coming months. 

In the meantime, we are delighted that the 2025–2026 school year is happily underway. I hope you will come see for yourself all the ways we are helping to prepare our students for the future.

Alixe Callen ’88 is Milton’s head of school.