It’s 10:40 a.m. Students leave class and fill the hallways, stopping at lockers or water fountains or bathrooms. After stalling for as long as they can and finally taking a seat in the cold auditorium, a quick introduction finishes, then a round of applause, and a monotonous speaker gets on stage, word-filled slides projected on the screen. Students sit back, feet up and phones out, until the announcements at 11:18 that have to be made before Friday.

As defined by Parker’s website, MX is “Parker’s educational crossroad, our civic sanctuary, where students and teachers come together to create a learning community.” Theoretically, MX gives us the chance to share and learn interesting information to which we might not have access normally, and to provide new and different experiences.  The concept is great.  And to be fair, sometimes this is how MX works.  

But why is it that a significant number of students so often try to find excuses to miss these 40-minute periods on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays?

The simple reality is that not everyone enjoys Morning Ex. In fact, most people don’t. It’s never possible to please everyone, but many MXs are too uninteresting and too unrelatable. We have it three times a week, but the odds of having three relevant, worthy MXs are low.

It is important to acknowledge that some MXs are interesting to some people. But it is uncommon for an MX to be relevant or interesting to a large group of people–the topics are varied and pertain only to specific people’s interest.

Also, many Morning Exs serve the presenters as well as the audience — for example the Greek Play, an important chance for 4th graders to share their knowledge about ancient Greece. But again, sometimes these MXs are just too uninteresting to keep the attention of the audience.

Another reason for the dislike of MX these days is that students don’t have much say in what they have to sit through. And it’s not the MX committee’s fault, which most people often think.

Right now, MXs are scheduled, through the MX committee, primarily by faculty or staff, who choose people to talk to the student body. And much of the time, the speakers chosen this way don’t interest or inspire students. That’s a problem because to create the “civic sanctuary” that Parker wants,  the audience, which is mostly students, needs to be engaged.

To do this, students need to be more active in bringing people–only students really know who students want to see speak. Incentivizing students by granting them credit (for a class or for civic engagement) for sponsoring an MX could be a way to make this happen.

Also, why waste three periods per week when the topics tend to be uninteresting and/or not beneficial to the group whom MX is supposed to be benefiting? With so many extended advisories anyways, why not use our time more efficiently? Our Mondays already go to 3:50–it would make more sense to remove that MX and end school on Mondays at a reasonable 3:10.

Morning Exs are a Parker tradition and, understandably, there might be people who don’t want to get rid of even one of them. But traditions sometimes become outdated or unnecessary, and it’s time we rethink and restructure to get the most out of our “educational crossroad.”