Homeschooling a Dozen

With all the gloom and doom in this world, it's so nice to hear good news for a change. I just read that the Duggars, a homeschooling family from Arkansas, had their 17th child this week. How cool is that?

Judging by the ages of the Duggar children, I'm guessing Mom D. now homeschools about a dozen of her kids at any given time. That may sound overwhelming, but when you consider that she's been doing this for a while, she could probably run homeschooling rings around the rest of us! Also, now that the eldest is 19, every other year or so, she graduates a child. OTOH, if she keeps having babies (she's only 40), she'll keep her "school enrollment" at 12 or so for some time yet.

When I compare her to the many young women of America's past (my husband's grandmother was one of them) who taught school in one-room schoolhouses to a good-sized group of local children of a wide range of ages and from different homes, and still managed to keep our country's literacy rate high (a lot higher than it is today!), I see that Mom D.'s job can be done, and done well. After all, she's raised these children to comply with her behavior standards. The young ladies who taught in one-room schoolhouses did not have that advantage, nor did they have her wisdom stemming from life experience, since they were usually fresh out of high school themselves.

I've tried several times to visit the Duggar family's site today, but could not get in. I'm guessing it's overwhelmed with visitors who also feel that the Duggar's news is good news.