Even as Jill Duggar’s tell-all memoir achieves New York Times bestseller status, still more ugly truths are coming out about her awful parents.
For a long time, critics of the Duggars have worried over how Jim Bob and Michelle educate — or don’t — their children.
They deny them any real schooling. And they use materials from the IBLP cult that range from inadequate to downright dangerous.
As it turns out, it gets even worse. Derick just explained that most of his in-laws didn’t receive past a 7th grade education … for one awful reason.
Before we get into Derick Dillard’s recent interview, we want to emphasize that the previous concerns remain extremely valid on their own.
Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar deliberately sabotaged their children’s social opportunities.
Like many cult members, they homeschooled their children to keep them from meeting different types of people or learning simple truths about the world.
Additionally, IBLP’s “educational” materials are awful.
Some of them are simply unfit for any learning environment. Their job to indoctrinate, not to educate.
And others go to great lengths to promote the worst that the cult has to offer, like rape culture. The victim-blaming mentalities that allow predators to prowl through fundamentalist circles happen on every level.
Now, for Derick Dillard’s recent (September 28) interview with the Los Angeles Times.
He noted that the lack of protections in place for children on reality television had meant that the Duggar children’s education suffered.
“If a family sees an opportunity to make money, they can justify taking away their kids’ time [in school],” Derick warned.
Derick then explained “because, well, they don’t need education,” he said of how such a neglectful parent might reason. “They can just have this money to support them.”
As a result, he said, “none” of wife Jille’s 18 siblings “really had much education past the seventh grade.”
A seventh grader is 12 years old. People learn a tremendous amount of important things about history, science, and more after that age. But not in the Duggar family.
“A lot of that was due to the show taking over,” Derick then claimed. “It was like, ‘Well, if the show requires most of the filming hours during the weekday, then school is not really that important.’”
“I can’t say that kids should never be involved in reality TV because I think parents should have a say,” Jill chimed in. (No)
“But I think networks should have more accountability in place,” she went on.
Jill would like safeguards “To make sure that kids are being protected, and that they’re getting the education they need, that [the TV show] is not taking priority and that their rights are not being violated.”
She continued: “I went on to take some college classes. I got my midwifery certifications. I’m currently inactive on my status now.” True!
“But I do think that the show took priority in a lot of areas of our lives,” Jill noted. So yes, she does believe that her parents robbed her and her siblings of a full education.
No Duggar Kid Got More than a 7th Grade Education, Derick Dillard Describes was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.