Joyfully At Home: Chapter 13 - Part Four

As I've been learning more about CP/QF culture, I find that looking at families that stand out from the average family teaches me about the unspoken portions of the culture.  For example, watching how the Rodrigues Family interacts in CP/QF society shows how the family accidentally violates some unspoken tenets of the culture. Jill's palpable ambition for her daughters to marry into more visible, richer families is frowned upon.  While Jill's personality might be changeable, the family also struggles under being of Spanish descent (rather than the preferred Anglo background) and as poor as every CP/QF family remembers being, is struggling through and/or fears their children will be in the future.

In the last section of Chapter 13 of "Joyfully At Home" by Jasmine Baucham, young Jasmine attempts to navigate minefield of college education.   The standard talking points for CP/QF beliefs on education are blissfully simple: NO ONE EVER NEEDS COLLEGE.   

Isn't that easy?  If only it were true......

The claim that everyone can succeed at homeschooling (if female) or running their own business (if male) removes all sorts of potentially awkward moments.   For homeschooling moms, worrying about how ready their kids are for college becomes a non-issue.   For men, concerns about providing for an ever-increasing family can be swept aside by assuming that his business will be in a much better position next year.

Is the unquestioning rejection of college - or any post-secondary training that cannot be accomplished through self-study or apprenticeship to a safely vetted church member - realistic?  Oh, God, no!  The leaders and influencers of CP/QF culture carefully conceal their degrees, training, and struggles while confidently parroting the joys of self-employment.

Steven Maxwell - who can keep three SAHDs in middle-class comfort - has a college degree in engineering.   Gil Bates - who runs a tree removal service with some of his sons - has a college degree in business.   Jim Bob Duggar does not have a college degree - but his family has a long history in commercial and residential real estate management and sales.    Obviously, there's nothing wrong with getting a college degree or being born into a family with self-owned business experience; the problem comes when young people are taught a ideology that obscures the factual basis of their family's income.  

That leads us to the last portion of this chapter where Jasmine attempts to reconcile the reality of her parents' educations and her plans for education with the SAHD philosophy that housework and child rearing is really complicated so young women need to apprentice under the mothers after finishing high school to have any shot at being able to run their own household.  The portion in ellipses are overwrought conspiracy theories about how the government is going to impinge on homeschoolers.

Question 4: What if you need a college degree to homeschool your children?

(...)

An answer to the question: does a homeschool mom need a degree to teach her own children? I have to answer a resounding no! And this comes from the daughter of a woman who graduated magna cum laude  from one of the biggest historically black colleges in America with a teaching degree, and a father who likes to joke that he has " more degrees than a thermometer," and has experienced the rigorous academic environments of schools like Rice University here in the states and Oxford in England. 

(...)

Because these laws are a very real threat, the decision to get a college degree to promote homeschooling security should be one that you and your parents should make together. This decision does not negate the experience of living at home between high school graduation and marriage; on the contrary, I myself am in the process of working towards a fully accredited degree in English from the comfort of my own home.

I decided to give the English degree for a number of reasons, homeschooling laws being an extremely peripheral one. For the most part I was very interested in the online program being offered, and wanted to challenge myself in new ways. If homeschooling laws are your reason for getting a college education, though, I would strongly caution you; a nation that tries, constantly, to make it more and more difficult for homeschoolers, will not stop at legislation that would make it illegal for mothers to homeschool without a college degree; it's a slippery slope. I don't think that any type of degree - even the Doctorate in Education - is a safety net against home-school laws.(pgs 154-156)

Young Jasmine Baucham doesn't think that a mom needs a college degree to homeschool her kids - but her experience is much different than the "ideal" CP/QF homeschooling mother.  Bridget Baucham earned a college degree in education.  At the bare minimum, that means that Bridget Baucham was exposed to the idea of developmental milestones, different methods of showing competence, the existence of learning disabilities, and methodologies in teaching.  At the same time, she also had to take courses in post-secondary math, science, language arts and social studies.

Compare Bridget Baucham's educational background to Jessa (Duggar) Seewald.  The Duggars used a combination of computer-based CD classes and ATI booklets.  While I'm sure the producers of "Counting On" edit out plenty of times that Ms. Seewald answers questions sensibly, she's had a number of times where she struggled to recognize basic concepts or vocabulary terms.  That would make homeschooling more difficult especially if those represent gaps due to lack of a quality education.

Young Jasmine failed to appreciate the benefits to obtaining a college degree for a homeschooling mothers - but I doubt Mrs. Jasmine Holmes feels the same way.  Voddie Baucham's multiple degrees gave him entry into CP/QF circles that he would have normally be shut out of due to racism.  Those same degrees have allowed him to earn more than the vast majority of husband and fathers who do CP/QF ministry in the absence of any post-secondary degrees. Bridget Baucham kept her wits about her while her husband and daughter were descending into the dual madnesses of emotional purity and stay-at-home daughterhood - and eventually told her daughter to start her own life and family.   Would she have stayed as grounded if she hadn't lived as a single adult while attending college prior to marriage and motherhood?  Jasmine herself learned that a college degree allows a young wife and mother to find enjoyable part-time work in education; a field where most SAHD would be unable to apply for entry level jobs due to lack of college credits.

So Geoffrey Botkin - the father of her chums Anna Sophia and Elizabeth Botkin - has resurfaced with a YouTube channel.   I made it less than 2 minutes into a video answer to a woman's question about "What If My Husband Dies?" before I was blinking repeatedly and saying "Yikes....that's a hot mess."  Hopefully, I'll have a post on that trainwreck soon!