In 1997, Paula Cole broke the Billboard top 10 with a song titled, “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?” The song traces a romance gone bad and wistfully recalls the stereotypical traditions of new romance in the 1950s. At the end of the song, the romance is gone, life is generally tragic, and the singer almost frantically asks “Where have all the cowboys gone?” At Parker, in 2022, we could write a similar song, except the title would be, “Where Have All the Traditions Gone?”

Before March 2020, when the novel coronavirus sent the Parker community home to learn from a screen, our school was teeming with traditions. As we return to COVID-19 school year number four, only the most basic traditions have survived the pandemic. We return to a school where a microscopic virus has become a weapon against much of what traditionally made Parker, “Parker.”

I acknowledge that traditions evolve over time, responding to the needs of Parker and society as a whole. However, in my opinion, the coronavirus has done more damage to traditions than necessary.

The Parker community will confront one of the most glaring losses to the community within the first eight weeks of school: Halloween. Before the coronavirus, Halloween was a day when students of all fourteen grades would arrive excitedly to school in costume. Just after 8:30 a.m., the halls would fill with parents ready to watch the parade of JK-5th grade administrators, teachers, and senior Big Siblings walk through the halls. This tradition was not just a parade, but an opportunity to appreciate the fourteen year character of our school and have the youngest members of the community feel the enthusiasm and support of the older students. Since the coronavirus, there have been no costumes or parades. This year, Halloween is not even noted on the all-knowing Blue Calendar. There was no explanation or email, just a cancellation by exclusion from the central scheduling tool. If we can safely have County Fair, it is no longer the danger of the coronavirus that precludes Halloween. It is an Administrative desire to end a well loved community tradition. 

Another lost tradition may be less noticeable than Halloween, but it is no less essential to the character of our community. For the first 11 years of my Parker education, parents were a constant presence in the building. In the morning, parents and children regularly shared breakfast in the cafeteria and then walked together to classroom doors. Parents would stop for informal conversations with administrators, teachers, and other parents. Seeing a friend’s parent in the hall was a common experience, and it connected the threads between our homes and our Model Home. 

For the last three years of my Parker education, seeing a parent in the building feels like a solar eclipse: something that rarely happens and fills you with excitement. Parent conferences continue to be held on Zoom. Breakfast in the cafeteria has returned, but with a host of rules about where parents can be and, more importantly, the halls where parents must immediately vacate upon depositing their child. I’ve heard some Lower School students look at a parent and say, “How did you get in here?” This is not how children should feel about parents in a home, even if it’s a Model Home.  

Parker’s website places the “Parent Partnership Agreement” directly below the Mission Statement. Under the stated terms of this Agreement, parents are expected “to communicate openly with the school and each other on behalf of their children; volunteer and participate in the life of the school; and contribute financially to support the school at whatever level” parents are able to participate. Without openly welcoming parents into the building, the Parent Partnership Agreement has become nothing more than “send an email” and “please donate.”  

The coronavirus has also served as a shield to cancel traditional parts of the Parker curriculum in every Division. Current Upper School students who attended Parker in Lower School recall with fondness making gingerbread houses and parent activity days. The second grade Japan curriculum, including the tearoom day and the Japan Presentation, is a beloved memory to nearly 50 years of Parker students. Middle School students previously engaged in a sharing of work in sixth grade and the Peace and Poetry event in seventh grade. These events differentiated Parker’s Middle School by emphasizing the ability to articulately speak with confidence to a room of adults. There is a common thread through all these traditions. Each brought parents and guardians into the school building. All of these traditions stopped during the coronavirus. Rather than restore such traditions in the more relaxed coronavirus world, these traditions were quietly erased from the fabric of our school with only infrequent and minimal communication or explanation for the loss of long established curricular and community events. 

The rare explanation for the abolition of a tradition typically revolves around concepts like cultural appropriation, micro-aggression, or general best practices for a diverse community. These were the words whispered and rumored but never clearly announced by the Administration, for all Halloween activities, the third grade Thanksgiving Morning Ex, and the second grade Japan curriculum. Even if these are the genuine reasons for stripping our institution of such traditions, doesn’t our progressive pedagogy ask us to continue with the tradition but do so with a critical eye and as a means to educate ourselves and the broader community of how to honor both our past and present values? In that light, canceling traditions signals a cancellation of all that Parker stands for and not just a parade, a gingerbread house, or a presentation about the Nobel Peace Prize.

Tradition is defined as “the handing down of statements, customs or information, from generation to generation, especially by word of mouth or by practice” or “a continuing pattern of cultural beliefs or practices.” At Parker, the continuing pattern of beliefs, such as the value of a progressive education, and practices, such as specific grade level activities, is what connects current students to generations of previous Colonels, and the generations of Colonels to come. If we, as members of the Parker community, no longer have traditions connecting us to each other, then our school becomes just another organization in the lists of organizations we affiliate with for a short duration of time and not the Model Home we return to, either as alumni visitors or alumni parents. 

As I begin my fourteenth year as a Parker student, the pull of tradition feels stronger and more important. I am bound to this community by cotton candy for breakfast at County Fair, smiling at the joy of a student declaring, “This concludes the Morning Ex,” and the hypnotic drone of bagpipes. Without such traditions to tether me to the corner of Clark and Webster, this institution will become as important as my first grade summer camp group: not important at all.