(This article originally appeared in Foxcroft Magazine, 2002)

Yesterday as I drove through the campus gates, the sight of faculty children playing in the "bamboo forest" to the right caught my eye. Stopping the car and rolling down the windows, I watched the children and listened to their imaginative play. I celebrated their opportunity to be safe, age appropriate and creative, and I silently thanked their parents on behalf of these children for allowing them this unstructured, developmentally-sound playtime. Simultaneously, I felt a deep sadness, for all too soon - though late by the current culture's "standards" - these youngsters will be "programmed for success," and that programming will take on all the overtones of the 24-7 strangle-hold that grips our schools, our colleges, our work places - indeed, our lives.

Shortly, thereafter, I allowed myself half an hour with The Washington Post (Yes, I, too, have a schedule to keep!), and the article entitled "Perfect Problems" (Sunday, May 5, 2002) drew my attention. The article discusses the lives of high school seniors, the expectations of parents, the culture, and the always - looming colleges. "This is a generation of kids who listened to Mozart as infants and enrolled in Suzuki piano lessons at age 3…Their summers have been filled with camps for computer programming and lacrosse; their falls, winters, and springs with fencing classes and SAT prep courses as early as middle school…The machine runs 24-7, encouraging success, not balance or introspection. If you have any doubt about that, sit down with a couple of perfection-bound high school juniors or seniors and notice the circles under their eyes from lack of sleep and downtime."

One interviewed student from the article says, "All these things I try to make perfect are really just making me seem marginally tolerable. The biggest message I've gotten is that you should always doubt that we're good enough. I see what's missing instead of what's there." Carolyn Callahan, a thirty-year veteran of the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented at the University of Virginia says in the article, "They are going through the motions and not enjoying what they're doing." She goes on to note, "that the proportion of young people ages 15-19 who have taken their own lives has jumped 114% since 1980." And yes, tucked into the article is yet another sign of the times, "the perfection machine, focused on outcome rather than process, discouraging the growth of an inner moral compass has lead to students cheating 'on a greater scale than ever before.' "

The juxtaposition of these experiences forced me to throw away my own schedule for the remainder of the day and to muse. Over two decades ago Dr. David Elkind exposed "the hurried child" in his book so titled and pondered the results of that speed in a sequel All Grown Up and No Place to Go. Decades before Elkind, Piaget and Erickson examined the developmental process and in layman's terms extolled the value of "play" and the sequential nature of childhood development. Yet, somehow, somewhere, for some reason we all - parents, grandparents, educators, employers, our country, our culture - participate in "more is better" and "the fuller the Daytimer, the better." We model over- scheduling, and we allow our children to do too much too soon because we want them to succeed. While "success," whatever it's ultimate definition, is inherently a worthy goal, the cost of hurried success may come at the price of joy, wonder, contentment, satisfaction, a comfort with self, and occasionally, as the headlines scream, honesty - the stuff of the soul.

When I meet families in the Admission Office, I confidently proclaim the developmentally sound dimensions of a girls' school. Many of those dimensions allow girls the space to be age appropriate, to be authentic, and to find voice. Just as confidently, I add that Foxcroft's core value, "being known" and the school's residential community enhance the girls' school advantage. I also remind those families, however, that "the real world does not end at Foxcroft's front gate." Thus, these Sunday afternoon musings on our hurried children simultaneously bring satisfaction and a confession. Even here, our students do too much, have too little time to play and all too often have dark circles under their eyes. Foxcroft, like all schools, is caught in the ever-tightening circle created by the pressures of the culture and by the highly charged college selection process. Twice a year, I exercise the prerogative of the Head and declare a surprise holiday. On those days, however, I, unlike the Head when I was a young teacher, must stipulate that there will be no activities, that we will run no transportation, that we will simply "be" for the day. Therein lies a huge difference. Thirty-five years ago, students felt comfortable to be free; today, we must give students permission to be free of schedules. A reprieve twice a year, however, is at best a temporary palliative and in no way addresses the larger cultural issues.

Nonetheless, Monday finds me newly resolved to preserve and protect our many strengths and to make the issues of balance and over-scheduling Foxcroft's focus for the year to come, for I fear not to do so will cause a generation eventually to ask "Is that all there is?"

Mary Lou Leipheimer
Head of School