‘Counting On’ Spoilers reveal there are some good, reputable, even religious-based homeschools out there that just solely focus on the academic portion of their students lives. I should know, I was in one, from the time I was in 6th grade until Graduation, I was homeschooled.
However, unlike some children it wasn’t because my family were uber religious and wanted to keep me away from the world, rather it was just because there were a lot of health issues that were going on at the time and because I had proven I could keep up with the work, we decided that homeschool would be best. (Although, I can tell you, it’s not the first choice my Mom wanted.)
‘Counting On’: Is Homeschool To Blame For Anna Duggar’s Willful Ignorance?
However, the ATI curriculum, from what has been reported about it, is not one of these programs. Instead of focusing on just the academics portion, they have “wisdom booklets” that include every day life training too, and wildly inaccurate bible interpretations that make life as legalistic as possible for all of their students.
So when people say “it’s a cult”, it may not have started out that way but boy did sure evolve into one. ATI started as a counter culture to the 1960’s movement of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll originally and it was aimed at teens and applied seven basic life principles from the IBLP – a strict branch of the Independant Baptist faith.
The ATI has strict teachings about marriage and in one of those teachings a woman has to stay under God’s umbrella of protection – which is having a husband and submitting to him in all things. Submitting to your husband is, according to their beliefs, the same way you would submit to God.
I had definitely heard of these kinds of teachings before, but even when I was homeschooled it sounded like something out of days gone by, until recently I had no idea that these kidns of draconian practices (and that’s what they truly are) were going on within homeschool circles.
However, this was a very different curriculum than what my homeschool experience was in the 90’s. It was the Clinton era, pre 9-11-01, before the christian conservative world went into their bunkers and decided that the entire world was at war with them.
I was never taught anything about marriage and family in my homeschool experience, and I doubt that my own single Mom would have appreciated such teachings in her household. What Anna experienced, and what’s still going on with this system is religious cult indoctrination at its finest.
Yes, Anna is an adult now and she can make her own decisions, but a lot of the indoctrination that the ATI homeschool education system uses never tells you that. They say that a woman’s direct authority under God is her husband and that she is to be a helpmeet to him and her submission to her husband is equal to her submission to Christ.
They never tell a woman that she has her own volition, her own choices, the authority is always given to her husband. The IBLP and the ATI system does not prepare women and girls for a life outside the home, they literally teach that if a woman leaves her husband, then her children will abandon their faith and the women themselves will open themselves up for being sexually assaulted… all kinds of fear-mongering and lies.
So while, homeschooling itself is probably not to blame for Anna Duggar’s willful ignorance, years of indoctrination and conditioning by a curriculum that was cultivated by misogynistic narcissists was. Anna isn’t out of the cult yet, because she hasn’t realized that that’s what it is yet. While the breakdown has not happened yet, it may yet be forthcoming. Stay tuned!!!
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