Michelle Duggar: Mixing Math Lessons With Character Lessons
Michelle wants her kids to be good people as well as good students.
When 19 Kids & Counting‘s Michelle Duggar isn’t making way-out-there statements about the world not being overpopulated or husbands governing their wives, she occasionally makes a bit of sense.
Say what you will about the number of children she has, at least she’s doing her best to keep them from becoming brats or drains on society. And perhaps it’s partly due to the fact that her homeschooling includes lessons in character-building.
In her blog on the Duggar website, Michelle explains that her homeschooling curriculum includes lessons in character-building, “which we think children are never too young to start learning about.”
Every month, she selects one character quality from a set list of 49 – she doesn’t elaborate on the list or or where it comes from – and studies it with her children. Then she invents projects the family can do to bring the lesson home.
For instance, to teach the theme of “initiative,” the Duggar kids secretly did helpful chores for each other – like making each other’s beds or cleaning up clutter – to see who noticed.
Michelle also teaches the opposite of each given quality (unresponsiveness, ingratitude) to hit the point home even more clearly.
Since it would take a little over four years to get through that list, presumably the Duggars start over again once they wrap up Character Quality #49 – by which time the children are ready to get going again on #1.
“When we practice learning those qualities and doing that in our home, it literally makes a joyful, happy home – a fun place to live,” she says.
Okay, maybe that list is a little long – the Boy Scouts only have 12, for pete’s sake – but if it works, who are we to argue with success? Maybe I could take a page from that “initiative” lesson next time my kids dawdle over bathtime.
Photo: via PacificCoastNews.com]
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The 49 character qualities come from an organization headed by a man named Bill Gothard. The organization is called ATI (Advanced Training Instituted) and IFBLP (Institute for Basic Life Principles) and is also where she got the “overpopulation is a myth” and “men should govern their wives” dogma. This group is considered a Christian cult that has had many, many accusations of abuse against it and teaches about an umbrella of authority the has God on top, them Bill Gothard, them Fathers and men in general. Woman and children are under the authority of their Fathers and Husband’s and widows are even under the authority of their sons. To say that this group teaches and enforces misogyny would be putting it mildly. The homeschooling curriculum leaves the children with no chance of post secondary education other than that approved by and provided by ATI or an equally unaccredited “school” like CollegePlus, which the Duggar’s also promote. While the math lesson coupled with “character” lessons may seem wise, like all things Duggar, it is presented in a candy coated version of what it really is. Continued indoctrination in to a cult. So basically you get addition, subtraction and brainwashing all in one package. Not particularly impressive or inspirational in my opinion. I have close family members involved in this organization and therefore know the truth about the sugar coating that goes on in how it is presented on the TLC show. If people knew the truth about the group the Duggar’s belong to and the twisting or Scripture by Bill Gothard,, their heads would spin.
The Duggars fail on half of those qualities.. Agree with Hannah Joy. They also suggest books like Train up a Child” by the Pearls and “Spanking :Where, When, and How’ by Roy Lesin in their Amazon store. These are highly controversial books encouraging fear -based respect. I am not sure if the Duggars use these techniques but they endorse all the same. Many resources have been removed from their site.They linked to Debi and Michael Pearl but the link was removed and the blanket training page was removed also. Well-behaved kids are nice but it should be out of love for the parents and not fear. Keeping too tight of a reign on your kids produces the opposite results from my experience. Legalism and fear will not cure spoiled brats or laziness.