In the wake of Trump’s second term, a conversation the student body can’t seem to drop is the insistence that we, as a school, need to “start talking about and debating current events.” In the January 9 Weekly Debrief sent by Student Government President Ella Goodman, she identifies that “students would like opportunities to debrief and discuss current events in history classes.” Further emails suggest ideas on how to better incorporate current events by adding them to Life Kit or forcing history teachers to give up more instructional time to focus on current events. Parker students, however, are often incapable of having these conversations in a safe and productive manner.
The Parker history curriculum, like all classes, is limited by time. As a result of chronology, this often means history after 1970, which is of course in the living memory of many folks at the school, is left on the chopping block. As such, many students lack an understanding of the more recent causes of modern crises. My guess is that most Parker students don’t know about Desert Storm, the Iran Contra affair, or even the Iraq War. Perhaps they could identify that they happened but not draw the links between their results and our modern political landscape the way they could with World War II or the Civil Rights Movement. Modern history topics like these are foundational to the discussion of current events that these students claim to want. How do you talk about the use of Fentanyl as a political tool without understanding the Opioid crisis? How do you talk about the slashing of medicaid benefits without talking about the Obama administration?
Anecdotally, the folks calling for the school to address current events in class, are the ones who have the privilege to ignore current events. For these students, current events can stop at the door of a classroom or at the beginning of the lesson. These students do not have the full force of the American imperial machine calling them terrorists or stripping them of bodily autonomy. The result is that the call to “discuss current events” is a call to have the work done for them. To have a teacher give them space to say what they will while other students who wake up in the morning to emails informing them the state of Kansas won’t issue them an ID or another one of their neighbors has disappeared into the night have to grin and bear it.
Since October 7, 2023, Parker has pulled back from political messaging. Through much of the first Trump term, Parker’s admin would send out virtue signalling emails on the various capital P political topics of the day. However, those emails have stopped, the class about terroism has been cancelled, and discussion of the conflict was suppressed. A true discussion of the history in the Gaza strip requires an acknowledgement of hard truths that the school seems unwilling to present. We do not discuss the Suez Canal Crisis or the Nakba in class. So, when inevitably it’s time to talk about current events, the conversations ignore the history less than two decades ago to keep things ‘easy’ for some students. This is not to say valuable and nuanced conversations can’t be had, but, as it stands, the knowledge base simply isn’t there.
On September 28, National Guard members paraded through the city and unlawfully arrested Chicago citizens. In the days following, no MX or Student Government time was used to address this instance of political violence and pressure despite it being widely televised. Two weeks prior, the school demonstrated not only its ability but willingness to flagrantly violate school protocol about how community time is allocated to address the Upper School about political events. However, on neither September 29 or 30 did Ms. Zeller take the stage. These moves make it clear which students the school believes are worth reassuring about their ‘safety’ and which they are not. Silence is complacency. Students can tell when the state sanctioned killing of Renee Good, which is just one example of many, goes unremarked while other violence becomes the center of precious MX time. To students who are paying attention, this does not imply the necessary tactfulness for Parker to ‘teach current events.’
A microcosm of this larger issue is the current events page of The Student Voice. The news item on March 2 featured none of the big ticket items of the preceding week. Where was mention of the US invasion of Iran or the arrest of officials associated with Jeffrey Epstein?With most “current events” conversations at Parker lacking context, and some topics being wholly ignored, discussions are rendered hollow at best and harmful at worst.
The Parker administration has failed to stay on top of our evolving world and remains silent on some of the decades most serious pain points. Thus, all attempts to appear current fall flat. Ultimately, Parker students have not been prepared to have meaningful, interesting, and productive conversations about our current political landscape. Before Parker can haphazardly toss ‘current events’ into our Life Kits and history classes, it needs to give students a rigorous, thorough, and diverse understanding of the history that has led us to this moment. Otherwise we end up in discussions that wind around an idea that is never explored, while allowing students who fail to do the work themselves have free reign over a discussion. All while the notes that aren’t being played become louder and louder.
