Churchhoney

I agree with this. And since the Duggars had busily convinced their daughters that the incident didn't really affect anything -- except whether your kids could play hide and seek or not -- I expect that Jill didn't mention it to Derick. They were practically strangers and this was, in Duggar world, a totally meaningless incident that was years in the past. Combine that fact with the whole taboo on sexuality thing, and I can't really imagine Jilly Muffin telling him during their courtship -- whether or not she treated courtship as a time to "ask all of those tough questions" that they go on about. I expect that the whole family's response to the Josh revelations came as rather a thunderclap to Derick, Ben and their families.

Really good observation. In addition, I rather think that Josh doesn't actually like anyone -- any adults, at any rate; he has seemed to like his kids. But when it comes to his peers and other adults, I think he probably walks around looking at everyone through a haze of buried anger and resentments, contempt and arrogance mixed in with insecurities and fears that he's inferior. He doesn't seem to have any friends, and it's often been remarked that there doesn't seem to be much if any warmth or camaraderie between himself and his siblings, of either gender. An awful lot of things get in the way of Josh having healthy relationships, or even any relationships, I expect. And then when you add to that the clear issues with women -- he's pretty much a mess. I wish he lived in an environment where getting thoughtful help to work through your issues wasn't considered a devilish activity. Instead, he's a very brittle personality living in a situation where no real help is allowed.

And, in fact, to go much farther than most appear to have gone, they wouldn't even have to hook up with scary outside strangers. Jinger, for instances, could learn a lot of stuff just from noncontroversial websites and the library and just from experimenting. But it appears that they don't even do that sort of thing. They do appear, to me, anyway, to lack curiosity and drive to an astonishing degree.

Interesting. I'm of two minds about whether Ben would ask to opt out. On the one hand, I imagine he'd love asking for a privilege on the grounds of his being a "celebrity." .... On the other hand, he's the one Duggarling (semi) who actually does seem to want to engage with others online (he quits the engagement quickly when he can't keep up with the conversation -- but unlike the others, he does initially respond). Plus, I think he (secretly or not) wants to be a college student so badly that he might relish having his name in the directory. And we're talking tens of thousands of students here, so it's not as if it'd be too obvious to the general public. Curious to find out which it is. ETA: If indeed he's there, which I'm actually betting he's not.

I would bet the real answer to this is that Jim Bob's ego (and also Bill Gothard's, but only secondarily) can't brook the possibility that somebody might learn something or wonder something or think something beyond the minuscule amount that he, JB -- the umbrella of everything -- knows. I suppose the ideological answer is that God's primary commandment is that the Bible is the only thing we need. And that therefore everything else is merely a temptation of the devil. Pffthhhht to both answers, I say.

The more I think about Ben's possible "campus ministry," the sicker it makes me and the more pitiful it seems. If that's indeed what he's trying to do and he isn't really in school, then deep down underneath he must be pining to be in school and to have a more normal life, I think. Pitiful and even scary and ominous, because, the Duggars being the Duggars, that ship has probably sailed for him. Not good to begin your married and family life with a huge hidden desire that the marriage pretty much forecloses to you, perhaps forever. (see Duggar, Josh) And then when I think of the "ministry" he might do. Oy vey. Here, students, let me urge you to be like me -- ignorant, bigoted, closeminded and loudmouthed. To spout foggily understood quasi-Calvinist theology on the Internet and then fall apart like a wet tissue with the very first question or argument anyone raises regarding my position. How academic. How learned. How worthy of emulation. And yet somehow he really thinks it is? Christ.

I think the key to why they probably wouldn't allow you to opt out of just getting the school email address is that you don't have to use it. You have it -- and it's helpful for the school itself, your professors, people who might assigned to a study group you're in, etc, since they can find an email for everybody on campus -- but beyond checking it for announcements from the administration or your professors, you're free to use your own email for everything else and ignore anything stupid that turns up in your box. If a school doesn't just automatically assign emails, then it's a lot more work for them administratively to actually get a working email for everybody on campus. They'd have to track them down, proofread 'em, worry about what happens when somebody suddenly switches emails in the middle of a semester. With the assigned ones, they can blast email all the students at once with an important administrative announcement. And if somebody whines that they didn't see it, it's on them; they can't complain that they had to change their email address suddenly and the announcement got misdirected.

When I've seen those cakes before, they've always been decorated with some fresh flowers or, in some cases, fruit. Sometimes a lot, sometimes just a bit, placed strategically. Sort of like cake ikebana. Very pretty and actually much more sophisticated and classy than most of the usual cakes, when they have the flower and fruit decorations. I never saw one in this form.

I was -- am, actually -- hoping the same thing. And maybe at least Ben will do it. I think he'd better hurry, though, because I can't see Jessa letting him go off to study while she takes care of the soon-to-be-numerous biological and adopted Seewald children all on her own. Sorry to harp so much on the diploma. But while they want us to think it's something -- and maybe it is something, such as a diploma from an online school of some kind -- they've been so vague that it raises my suspicions, since two of the options for awarding a homeschool diploma really require nothing but parents' word that the kid has completed the equivalent of high school. I still do think it's possible that they got her a more legitimate diploma of some kind, though, since they may have wanted to have a convincing answer ready if someone questioned whether Jessa was competent to teach.

Three year-long high school classes in lab sciences and four in math, with algebra one being the beginning of the sequence, unless you took some kind of applied math instead of algebra one, in which case you have to have taken two years of that to be the equivalent of algebra one. I'm trying to picture it. Picture not coming in clearly. Wonder how many years of arithmetic flash cards you need to replace the one algebra one course? Three years of social studies -- world history? sociology? At the Duggar house? Uh-huh. Sure. How many one-size-fits-all-from-K-to-12 Wisdom Booklets would it take to make up one of those courses? Okay, how many would it take if all the nonsensical untrue fantasy crap were removed from each Wisdom Booklet? Four years of high school English. What the heck would they read? What the even heckier would they write? The Duggars write a research paper. The Duggars write an analytical essay. The Duggars read Ralph Waldo Emerson and Toni Morrison. Heck. The Duggars write a friendly letter. And then on top of all this, two more high school units of your choice, "chosen from English, foreign languages, oral communication, mathematics, computer science, natural sciences, and social studies." Wonder what Michelle taught in her computer-science elective?

Yep. That would be the "awarded by the Duggar family based on their own criteria" option. (or even one of the homeschool-group-awarded diplomas, depending on the group) ... Given how little they've said about it, I have a feeling the Kinko's option the most likely. On the other hand, I expect they wanted her to have a diploma so that they could point to her having an educational credential to head off any criticism of having her being the kids' "teacher" when she's not a parent. So I do wonder whether they might have gotten her one by a more legitimate means. Yeah, I agree. I keep harping on the diploma, though, because people keep citing it as if it's evidence that she actually met somebody else's graduation criteria, like an online school's or something. But given that we've never heard any details about where it came from, and given that you can call something a diploma when you really met no criteria at all if you're slipshod and silly enough (and they are), I keep wanting to debunk the notion that having "a high school diploma" actually means that Jessa did any more with school than any of the other kids. Maybe it does. But maybe it doesn't. No way to tell based on what they've said.

She doesn't have any kind of diploma officially awarded by the state of Arkansas or their local school district, because state law prohibits that. She may have one from an online school, which would mean she'd actually fulfilled their requirements, whatever they might be; or one from a homeschool coalition -- some homeschooling groups give out diplomas to students who meet certain criteria and others simply give them out to any homeschool students whose parents pay a fee and ask for one; or she may have one that was simply awarded by the Duggar family based on their own criteria, which is also a common practice in the homeschool world. As far as I can tell, there's never been enough detail provided to know which of these is the case.

The stuff that the test covers is in this NARM booklet, from pages 38 to 51. http://narm.org/pdffiles/CIB.pdf It's a lot of stuff, and much of it is the same stuff a medically trained person would look at. If Jill really learned all of it well enough to pass a test on it, took the information seriously, and got the practical observational and hands-on experience that's said to be required for certification, she really would know something and could potentially be useful to people. (She'd certainly be a lot more useful if she consulted with actual medically trained professionals like CNMs as well, of course.) I honestly have difficulty seeing her truly mastering so much detailed information, though. Let alone being able to communicate clearly with pregnant women whose first language is Spanish. And because of her religious and cultural beliefs, I fear that she wouldn't be taking the biological information seriously enough but would have a tendency to act based on her ideology and misplaced faith rather than on the facts and the principles she should have learned. In any medical situation, there's tons of room for individual judgment, and even lots of MDs make ridiculous calls based on some bias that they have, so it would be hard to trust someone whose whole life is based on something other than reason and who's been taught to be proud of that fact. Nevertheless, non-nurse midwives really are active around the globe and have been an important part of health care in many places forever -- and still are important. There are non-nurse midwives in pretty much all countries, and as far as I know most aren't loonies deranged by "faith" and a horror of science into disrespecting and disregarding biology, but conscientious people who keep on learning as much as they can so they can continue improving their work. In lots of places most births are, of necessity, going to occur outside of hospitals, and there's clearly a place for serious non-nurse midwives in those situations.

I fear you may be right but I really really hope you're not.

That's what I wonder. It's just baffling, isn't it?

Me, too. But he's probably too busy banging his head against the wall. I know I would be.

Well said. That's what I think and hope, too.

Yeah, I definitely get this, and I'm sure most people feel this way, and justifiably so. But speaking as somebody who was brainwashed in much the same was as Jessa has been, I'll attest to brainwashing lasting a very very long time, in at least some cases. When I was in the first decade or so away from my tribe, my ignorance and warpedness largely continued and I got little sympathy for them either. Furthermore, most people I knew disbelieved about 90 percent of what I told them about my upbringing, I think, and I understand why they did because when you hear something absolutely nuts and miles out of the norm you figure it probably isn't true. And, unlike Jessa, I had really really left and was trying to turn aside from all that. I had left deliberately, lived several states away, saw and spoke to family members only very seldom, and very much wanted to be something different from what I'd been raised to be. And it still took me well over a decade to drop the most egregious of my mental habits. Jessa's still totally a Duggar, and will remain so until and unless she does something like I did and then spends years trying to become herself. I don't know what to say about sympathy because while I have no sympathy for JB and M, I also know it's very very hard for kids to leave and change to the degree she'd have to to make us all happy. At this point, I think she's still the robot JB and M raised her to be. And whether that represents the "real" Jessa who'd emerge if she were on her own, who knows? I know it's supposed to be disrespectful and simultaneously overgenerous to imply that these adult kids aren't acting entirely out of their own free will. But I wasn't at Jessa's age. And by then I hadn't lived with my family for four years. Although Jessa isn't a child, she unfortunately also is a child, in my opinion. And who knows whether she'll ever grow up? Because growing up would mean becoming conscious of a lot of things she's been raised to be unconscious of and is probably more comfortable being unconscious of. For that reason, I just can't take anything she says seriously. To me, it's just a robot talking. Thinking about a 22-year-old flesh-and-blood, pregnant talking robot spewing Duggar crap just makes me sad.

Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes.

Not entirely sure. Could be. But I have several commercial pilots in my family, and a couple of them don't have college educations, aren't ex-military, have a fair amount of emotional fragility and are, in my opinion, fairly frequent drunks. But they got the training and passed all the tests and have worked for years. They aren't airline pilots, but there are other jobs. So I actually think it's remotely possible for John David. After all, he did get his instrument rating, apparently, and that's a fairly challenging mental task. And, since he's a Duggar, I'm really pretty impressed that he managed that. I have no idea what he's actually like psychologically. I would kind of imagine, though, that he's sort of like the guys in my family -- perhaps minus the alcohol (or not) -- and, as I say, they're working professional pilots. What I am sure of, though, is that Jim Bob wouldn't help him pay for the training that's required. I don't think he'd ever help a kid get a job that would give her or him a life and a schedule that moved that kid out of range of JB's perpetual beck and call. So, it ain't gonna happen, in any case.

It's scary to imagine the degree to which this "keep everybody away from the opposite sex" thing may play in to the lack of job, education and career options for all the Duggars. Scary because it's insane.

Yeah, I agree. I still think that in a group of normal people with this many kids there'd be more of it, though. And that somebody would have really taken a ball and run with it to pursue something very seriously. Hell, they don't have much else to do, since "school" doesn't appear to be more than a few hours a day, at most. Looking at Jinger's supposed love for photography, for example, I kind of get the feeling that she was just handed the camera because every fundie family is "supposed" to have somebody recording their golden moments on film and she was the one elected since her child-care duties could be lighter. In my experience, when somebody really loves photography, you can't pry the camera out of their hands, and they're not only documenting weddings and graduations, they're photographing bugs and buildings and strangers, trying out pinhole cameras, reading books on the joys of f-stops, and pushing their photos to new heights and into experimental territory all the time. And plenty of people even do that without having their parents really support the hobby. But you don't see that with Jinger. John David impresses me most in this way. Seems to me he's shown the most drive with his hobby. Unfortunately for him, though, he's likely to end up as only a hobby pilot, since I don't see Jim Bob ponying up for him to get the extra training and pricey experience he'd need to get a commercial license. .... And it's great to be a hobby pilot if you have something else significant as your vocation, but I don't see that happening either. Worse, I think, is that what we're looking at now is the older kids -- into whom you'd think JB and M would have poured the most energy, since they were younger and less kid-burdened as they were growing up. I can't even imagine the levels of neglect that the younger kids are experiencing.

Well, when you look at all the wedding-related, romance-related reality-tv stuff out there, I'm guessing that those subjects, rather than the particular people involved in them, just draw in a bunch of viewers. You'd think that The Bachelor and the Duggar courtships and Say Yes to the Dress and Bridezillas would have pretty much nothing in common as entertainment -- but I guess just the fact that they're about preparation for the most important day of a woman's life is enough to guarantee decent ratings. I don't get it, but it seems clear that a lot of people do. And I guess it's not surprising that the networks look to subjects that have guaranteed ratings when they do the planning.

Dunno, but the IRS has been gradually strangled over the years, seems to me, as people in power seek to shield all their friends from scrutiny. So I'm not sure anything gets routinely reviewed any more. These guys are small potatoes -- which I suppose could make it either less or more likely they'll get reviewed. In any case, though, lots and lots of "charities" seem to get away with devoting only a small proportion of their funds to programs and a very large proportion to "administration," so I wonder whether the fact that everything they spend could be construed as staff salaries wouldn't allow them to do just what they're doing and still be considered law abiding. That's the great thing about Duggar logic, I suppose.

Great -- and awful -- story. I'd encourage him to go to Mass, too.