Has our school fulfilled its purpose? The mission statement says that we educate students to act with “empathy, courage, and clarity” in a society that is “diverse” and “democratic.” I cannot help but wonder if these words are nothing more than shiny maxims that we plaster to the walls instead of the principles that we actually choose to live by.

This time of year is jam-packed with Parker traditions like the Corinthians MX, Big Brothers and Sisters, homecoming, and a favorite, County Fair, which has been around almost as long as the school itself. When the school was founded in 1901, Colonel Parker was living the last years of his life. It goes without saying that his contributions to the philosophy of progressive education had a wide influence. He was against standardized classes, drilling, and rote learning. Our school went through its metaphorical adolescence in the early 1900s, mixing together ideas from John Dewey and Flora J. Cooke to form the apparent identity and values that define Parker today. These values of progressive education are usually demonstrated every day in two ways: words and actions.

I walk through the administrative hallway every day. In the conference room that connects to the principal’s office, Parker’s mission statement is suspended on the wall, framed with bronze and white matting. There are twelve chairs that are placed around the rectangular table in the center of the room. The window at the back looks out to the courtyard. The school’s mission statement has become a platitude for me and often a hypocritical one. Our new website idealizes us by saying, “Parker stands as a progressive school, dedicated to the growth and development of the whole person in relation to the growth and development of the whole school community, on behalf of our democratic society and the wider world.” That sentence is plain, empty, and ambiguous but still has an uncanny ability to persuade the reader that the school has a strong sense of identity and is on the forefront of education, producing the world’s next generation of problem solvers. We try to evolve with the times and present ourselves as innovative and lively, which is good and bad.

Junior Andy Wessman was a newcomer to Parker in fifth grade and had to learn our values through reading and experience. “It is extremely vague,” Wessman said about the mission statement. “They make it seem like we’re at the forefront of progressive education. We try to be, but sometimes we overemphasize that and lose some opportunities to further our education.”

I have gone to Parker sine I was four years old and learned the school’s philosophy through osmosis. But at that age, I did not care about the intellectual pursuit of self-actualization or citizenship. Instead, I was occupied with running around the field, impressing girls, and playing with Hot Wheels cars. When I became old enough to appreciate the material in my classes, school was no longer about education. It is about grades now.

I read the entire mission statement and all of the philosophy written out on the school website. My synthesis is that it promotes three motifs: empathy, leadership, and citizenship. These motifs are not common in my day-to-day life at Parker. Therefore, the motifs are unrepresentative and should be replaced to a certain extent by practicality, curiosity, and authenticity.

Firstly, empathy is overrated. Way overrated. In fact, it is dangerously overrated. Empathy is a façade. It is like a spotlight directing attention and aid to where it’s needed. We use our imagination to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. However, spotlights have a narrow focus. Spotlights focus on people who we already care about. And this is one problem with empathy. It does poorly in a world where there are many people in need and where the effects of one’s actions are diffuse, often delayed, and difficult to compute. We live in a world in which an act that helps one person in the here and now can lead to greater suffering in the future. In other words, because of our psychology, we are prone to only empathize with people who were are similar to or are already familiar with, which means that empathy almost entirely eliminates its own purpose. Empathy distorts our moral judgments in pretty much the same way that prejudice does.

Not every student at Parker is fit to be a leader. Positive attributes such as ability, authority, and reputation are not evenly distributed. Ideally, these attributes can be learned at school, and the leadership opportunities offered at the school are great, but they leave a lot to be desired. For example, teamwork and project-based activities are conducive to learning and teach us valuable skills, but we also cannot get into the habit of constantly depending on other people.

What is the exact purpose of teaching citizenship through education? What does that even mean? The word is defined as “the position or status of being a citizen of a particular country.” It means carrying out the duties that are bestowed upon you. Work ethic and virtue. Everything to help and nothing to hinder. Embryonic democracy. The harsh truth about teaching citizenship at Parker, however, is that your career path will not be designed for your character development like our school curriculum. If students are taught to instantly expect to enjoy or get something from what they do, we are setting them up for a massive disappointment when they enter more bureaucratic institutions, either in college or the workforce. You cannot be a leader if the only self-advocacy you learn is from group projects.

Do the motifs of the mission statement relate to any curricula or school policies? Yes and no. Parker is still an excellent school that is leaps and bounds ahead of other more traditional schools. Its reputation precedes its people. Moreover, I feel lucky to have teachers and a curriculum that puts more importance on relevance and student interest rather than conventional testing. That is a large component of why Parker teaches us to think rather than perform. That reason alone is enough to believe that Parker is doing something right.

“At my old school, they’re trying to get you to learn, not get the best grades,” junior James Cuevas said. “At public school, you’re trying to get the best grades. That’s it.” At Cuevas’ and Wessman’s schools before Parker, they both would spend six or seven months of the school year preparing for Illinois state tests. Teachers in CPS were given bonuses based upon how well their students performed on the standardized tests. At Parker, the system is on the other end of the spectrum, and rightly so. But even with that, our mission statement exaggerates our school’s philosophy too much. Upon reviewing the mission statement that I pass in the hall each day, the text seems slightly laughable — almost satirical at times. It’s like a piece of bad abstract art.

An ideal mission statement should give Parker students and faculty meaning in their work, convey what we are about and what we want to be, and unify people under a single comradeship. Meeting those criteria is extremely difficult. No one said that writing a great mission statement is easy, but there is no better time than now to start making some revisions.

People should know what they are getting into. It’s time to be more realistic with our mission statement. The Parker mission statement creates a false identity for outsiders.

If you have ever told a lie and felt uncomfortable because you see yourself as scrupulously honest, then you’ve experienced cognitive dissonance. It occurs when your ideas, beliefs, or behaviors contradict each other. I argue that institutions, like Parker, act like intelligent animals that are capable of paradoxes of identity like cognitive dissonance. Our school is a brain undergoing cognitive dissonance. We can either change what we think or what we do. Which one will it be?