"Home Schooling "
We sold our house in Bozeman after Danny died and moved to Springfield to work our direct sales business. We lived in a rental for a few months, but Shirley’s rental came open and we moved back into the same house she had tricked us into moving into when we first got married. I have always regretted selling our Bozeman home though.
School started for Katie and Kelly. Katie was in the third grade and Kelly was in first grade. Katie started bringing home bad grades and her first report card showed her barely passing. Lori informed me the school had implemented a new cooperative learning program. Katie’s group was getting low grades; hence, she was getting low grades, as she got the same grade as the group did.
I went to meet with the teacher to find out what was going on, only to be informed that because Katie didn’t raise her hand to volunteer in class, she was deemed a problem student and put in a group with other problem students. I explained to the teacher that she was new to the school and was just shy. I also explained to the teacher that Katie had always gotten really good grades before.
My request for Katie to be moved to a more productive group was refused. She explained that this was a new program being promoted by President Bill Clinton. I informed her that should Katie bring home another report card with bad grades again, due to the group grade, I would take action.
About a month later Katie came home from school very upset. She wouldn’t talk about it at first but finally told us how the teacher had taken up a collection at school for a poor single woman. Katie and one other student had declined to give, and their class had made fun of them. I asked her what the collection was for and why she didn’t want to give. Katie informed me that a woman who was in need of an abortion but couldn’t afford it was seeking the donations. I called the teacher the next day and confirmed Katie’s account of the event.
Lori and I had friends that had been home schooling, and we were impressed with what we had learned about the benefits of home schooling. Being able to instruct our children using a Christian faith-based curriculum was very appealing to us.
Very important as well was the mastery-based teaching as opposed to the exposure method used by the public schools. It would also help us to keep our children away from the atheistic humanism being taught in the public schools (see the Humanist Manifesto of 1933).
So, we informed the school we were removing our children from their school and began home schooling.