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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