Kingdom School Organized

The question now was, How will the children get their education? For a time we attempted to teach them at home with whatever textbooks we could muster. But my husband and I had a difficult time that first school year as we tried to educate our two children. My husband was working full-time, and I was taking in washing and ironing to supplement the weekly paycheck. In addition to that, I had a five-year-old son, Robert, to look after.

Just about then, in the spring of 1936, Cora Foster, a sister in the congregation and a teacher in the public schools of Lynn for 40 years, was dismissed from her job for not saluting the flag and not taking a teacher’s oath that was in vogue at the time. It was therefore arranged that Cora would teach the children who had been expelled from school and that our home would be used as a Kingdom School. Cora had her piano shipped to our home along with some textbooks for the children to use, and some of the older boys fashioned desks out of orange crates and plywood. We started the school the following fall with ten children in attendance.

My younger son, Robert, commenced his education by attending the first grade at the Kingdom School. “Before we began our regular class work,” recalls Robert, “Kingdom School opened with a Kingdom song every day, and then for a half hour we would study the Watchtower lesson for the coming week.” In those days the Society did not print the questions for the paragraphs of the study article, so it became the responsibility of the children to come up with the questions for the paragraphs to be used at the congregation meeting.

Cora was a devoted teacher. “When I had whooping cough,” reminisces Robert, and the school was closed till the contagious disease subsided, “Sister Foster visited the house of each student and gave homework.” Despite her devotion, she must have felt frustrated at times, for she had to teach the students in all 12 grades in one room. At the end of the five-year period that we had the Kingdom School in our home, there were 22 children attending the school.

Prejudice and Kindness

The flag-salute issue brought not only a time of test and stress but also much publicity by newspaper and radio. It was quite a common thing to see photographers in front of our home taking pictures of the children as they arrived at the Kingdom School. Many of our neighbors, who had been quite friendly before, now became antagonistic. They thought it was a terrible thing for our children to refuse to salute the American flag. ‘After all,’ they would say, ‘isn’t this the country that gives you your bread and butter?’ They did not appreciate that without Jehovah’s watchcare, there would be neither bread nor butter.

[Picture on page 21]

Kingdom School being conducted in our home during the 1930’s