Not 70 students who came to her during the course of the day, but the same 70 first-graders all day long. This is the highest number I've yet heard of, but, in the postwar years, classes of 50 were not unusual. This woman told me she had no major discipline problems and every student learned to read and write that year. Her story is similar to others I've heard from teachers of her vintage. Today, 1.5 million U.S. kids are schooled at home, a fivefold increase over the last eight years.
Every imaginable question is dealt with, and the answers are abstinence-centered.
According to many parents and professionals, certain children are born with mechanisms that render them immune or highly resistant to normal discipline. Having been there, done that, I am an expert on the subject. I am fascinated by the perspective people from countries outside the United States have on parenting. For example, an Asian man recently remarked to me that one of the problems with parent-child relationships in the United States is the lack of a generation gap. The realms of the spiritual and the material are forever in conflict.