2B
Wednesday, October 10, 2018 // The Statement
American miseducation
BY MARTINA VILLALOBOS, STATEMENT COLUMNIST
statement
THE MICHIGAN DAILY | OCTOBER 10, 2018
Managing Statement Editor:
Brian Kuang
Deputy Editors:
Colin Beresford
Jennifer Meer
Editor in Chief:
Alexa St. John
Photo Editor:
Amelia Cacchione
Designer:
Elizabeth Bigham
Managing Editor:
Dayton Hare
Copy Editors:
Elise Laarman
Finntan Storer
I
t was the first day of
sophomore
year,
and
my biggest concern was
whether or not I would get a
five on my first AP exam. A few
seconds after the bell rang, in
came Mr. Delap.
Mr. Delap was not an enigma,
but there was certainly a legacy
attached to him. He was my first
teacher to ever, vocally, teach
history without editing out the
more
violent
and
oppressive
moments of American history.
He once said that slavery was
the illegitimate child of America,
hidden in a closet, never talked
about. It was through images like
these that my idea of America
solidified.
It was here, in sixth hour, that I
first became interested in history
— a passion I maintain today.
At the end of my sophomore
year Mr. Delap retired, and at the
end of my junior year I left the
comforts of Fayetteville, Ark.,
for Ypsilanti, Mich. I traded the
Natural State for the Pure State.
In Arkansas, my last name
granted me firsthand judgement
and
second-class
citizenship.
It wasn’t that Arkansas, or
Fayetteville, lacked diversity, but
in the halls of my high school I
wasn’t eager to tell anyone that
I spoke Spanish. As I look back,
it almost felt like the Latinx
students were there to fill in
the seats, and leave — quietly. I
never felt overt racism but there
was almost a passive aggressive
attitude. You didn’t always see
people of color in AP classes —
there was an implicit division.
In
Ypsilanti,
I
became
a
different
kind
of
minority.
This was a school where my
skin color, my heritage and my
name were no longer the parts
of my identity that stood out. It
was saying things like, “Oh my
parents are professors” that did.
I became much more aware of
my own privilege. Ypsilanti is a
low-income working class town
that has had a struggling school
system for years.
It wasn’t until I sat down in
Ypsilanti High School that I
witnessed the realities of Mr.
Delap’s lectures. He said that
America was born shackled to
racism. Here, I realized that not
only had America never freed
herself of those shackles, but she
had built an empire on the backs
of those she deemed less worthy.
At this school, teachers were “let
go” in February, textbooks were
older than me and locked up,
the library wasn’t open
and school lunches were
served frozen. I faced an
education
system
that
stripped students of their
educational
rights.
It
wasn’t a school, but rather
an
incubator
prepping
America’s next generation
of laborers.
I graduated and did
so with an unimagined
support from my teachers.
It was the teachers who,
despite the system, tried
to keep an idealization
of education alive. It was
a support I was never
afforded in Fayetteville.
With this in mind, I
decided to email the few
people, teachers, who had
made a difference in my
academic career.
I emailed Mr. Delap
and I told him I had
been
accepted
to
the
University of Michigan. I
told him how his class had made
me aware of realities I would
have otherwise missed. I said I
wanted to study history. But most
importantly, I thanked him for
teaching honestly.
Since then we have held
correspondence for two years. In
those years we have discussed,
even debated, several aspects of
American history. It was while
I was studying in France earlier
this year that I got his latest email.
The tone of this email felt almost
defeated — a tone I had never
associated with Mr. Delap, who,
despite talking about American
history without stripping it of its
violent and oppressive nature,
never sounded like he had lost
hope. The developments of the
last two years had gotten to him.
He couldn’t reconcile the America
he had taught with the America
that was developing before his
very eyes.
I remember rereading the
email and not being able to come
up with an articulate reply. I
decided to call him.
For the first time we didn’t
discuss history, or at least not
directly. Instead, he told me
about his life — how he became a
teacher and why.
Mr. Delap was a teenager during
the Civil Rights Movement, he
began his teaching career during
the Vietnam War, and is now as
retired as Trump is overhauling
American politics.
“Back in those days, in the ‘60s,
I lived in Kansas City. You can’t
really say that it was segregated,
in restaurants people ate together,
but housing was segregated. The
only “mixing” was in sports,” he
paused.
He discussed his childhood
memories, highlighting that there
were injustices, similar to those
that I had witnessed my senior
year.
“I would come home from
school and turn on the news
and watch footage to see what
was going in Selma, dogs and
police with fire hoses,” he said.
He continued by saying that
even after all of these years the
prejudice persists — he
says that people never got
over their racist roots.
In the natural pause of
the conversation he broke
the silence saying, “Maybe
we have to wait for enough
of us to die off.” He sighed
and followed this comment
by saying that that really
wouldn’t change anything
because racism has taken
hold of a new generation —
our generation.
He went on to tell me
about how he almost got
drafted, but that it was
a time where they were
bringing
soldiers
back
so that he was promptly
rejected.
I
asked
him
if
he
thought he would have
gone and he replied, “I
always
understood
the
anti-war movement, and
sympathized with the anti-
war movement” but, “I was
a straight and narrow guy so that
if the government asks I would
go.”
This is quickly followed by,
“Seventeen of my high school
classmates were killed — what
makes me sick is not one of them
was what I would call a patriot.”
He said in his town most of the
students went into the military.
They followed the path of their
parents. They went in to find a
skill and then a job.
“No one wanted to triumph
over
communism,
they
just
followed tradition — learning a
skill in the army, it was the normal
thing to do,” he said.
I asked him if after all of these
years he felt discouraged to see
the state of America, having
spent most of his life teaching its
history.
He sighed and almost laughed.
“I’ve said this many times, I
don’t know if it is true — but I say
it a lot so maybe there is a grain of
truth — maybe I would be better
off selling life insurance, teaching
was a calling, religious people talk
about calling, and teaching was
my calling, but my career was,
I don’t know, maybe I deluded
myself.”
I interjected, “That teaching
was your calling?”
“It
might
have
been
but
the last few years I didn’t feel
satisfied, and I think that is my
fault — maybe I just wanted too
much, I wanted everyone to be
as interested in what we were
supposed to be studying, and as
the years went on they were less
and less interested.”
He continued by saying that the
last year was the most frustrating.
He felt more pressured to make
sure students passed so they
could graduate. He felt as though
he was no longer there to educate
people, but to train them.
Through the many lectures on
American History, Mr. Delap’s
voice over the phone and my own
experiences, I began to see the
figure of the American student
morphe.
It was only by leaving Arkansas
that I began to witness my own
privilege, but most importantly
I got to see a broken system. In
some ways, we are witnessing
the tragedy of the American
education play out before our very
eyes. It is the color of our skin
or our class that determines the
education we receive. This divide
shows education as a funnel, a
function of the state to answer
the demands of a country and
a market. Once it was soldiers,
today it is the poor and minority
working class. This is the tragedy
of a miseducation.
ILLUSTRATION BY TATIANA LOPATIN