Transcript: Reverend Dr. Michael James Oleksa, Ph.D.
Children rounded up and taught in a language they could not understand
- [Oleksa:]
- We know even from the oral tradition of the Yup’iks, the teachers take matters into their own hands. They go out and lurk in the bushes, wait for kids to come out to play and shanghai them up to the school. Now in those days the school was filled with not separate desks for each student but long tables and parallel benches from the shortest to the highest levels, so the short kids, the little kids, the five- and six-year-olds have the seats right in the front and the high school age kids the seats in the back. Teacher would begin speaking, scolding them, “Boys and girls when you hear the bell ring, come to school.” Well, charades work. The children understand this. They all nod their heads—ring the bell, come here, okay, got that. Of course, immediately is not implied. So given the rural sense of time it means sometime before sundown we’ll show up. This is still a problem in certain communities, I would say.