I attended my church’s parochial school for 2nd and 3rd grades. This was in ‘60 and ‘61.
My 3rd grade teacher, the appropriately named Mrs. Smoke, would tell us this, but alternately would say they were placed there by Satan to deceive us. Most of the kids in class and IIRC all of the boys were huge dinosaur fans, so she wasted a lot of time trying to set us straight. Several kids brought it up with their parents, who knew that Lutheranism got along fine with dinosaurs, many millions of years of life on earth, and generally accepted evolutionary theory, while doing a little toe dance around the question of humanity’s origins. The authorities were alerted and she didn’t return the next year. Neither did I. That was probably not the only reason for her dismissal, as she was seen as a sub-par teacher overall, while we good Lutheran children were, of course, all above average.
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