The Nation - News from Feb. 22, 1987

A fundamentalist preacher began serving 30 days in jail for teaching school without state certification. The Rev. T. N. Taylor, pastor of the First Assembly of God Church at Mount Pleasant, Iowa, told supporters gathered outside the Henry County courthouse that the education of his son, Nicholas, 8, and daughter, Stephanie, 13, at his one-room Blue Bird Christian Academy was worth the price of imprisonment. “We don’t believe that certification makes a child get a good education,” he said. “All we see it does is give the state control over the children.”