I refused to go back to any parochial school after that, and it was one of the only battles I won with my parents...but on with the story:
"This is what happens when you leave education to people for whom religious conversion is everything and learning is a distant afterthought.
"Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) is a fundamentalist curriculum founded in Texas in 1970. It started as a program for private Christian day schools, but it has been hugely successful among conservative home schoolers. Today, ACE claims it is used in '6,000 schools and thousands of home educators in over 140 countries.' It’s also used in government-funded voucher programs in several US states.
"ACE has always taken its fundamentalism very seriously. In his 1979 book Rebirth of Our Nation ACE’s founder Donald Howard wrote, 'Fundamentalism is intellectually sound. It has always prevailed in periods of great intellectual enlightenment. It is the only sound an logical solution to the existence of the universe… I am a fundamentalist. If I can be any more fundamental than fundamental, that is what I want to be.' Today, ACE views imparting these fundamental beliefs into children as its primary purpose.
"Howard later wrote 'We do not build Christian schools primarily to give a child the best education nor to teach him how to make a good living. Teaching him how to live and to love and serve God are our primary tasks.”
"He wasn’t kidding.
"I went to an ACE school for almost four years. By the time I left, I was certain that it was against God's will for governments to provide healthcare, evolution was a conspiracy to destroy Christianity, parents were morally required to spank their children, and science could prove that homosexuality was wrong. But worst of all was the feeling uneducated; I still struggle with self-conscious fears about gaps in my learning. ACE workbooks consist of simplistic fill-in-the-blank and multiple choice questions. And these questions are often hilariously, spectacularly bad.
"Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) is a fundamentalist curriculum founded in Texas in 1970. It started as a program for private Christian day schools, but it has been hugely successful among conservative home schoolers. Today, ACE claims it is used in '6,000 schools and thousands of home educators in over 140 countries.' It’s also used in government-funded voucher programs in several US states.
"ACE has always taken its fundamentalism very seriously. In his 1979 book Rebirth of Our Nation ACE’s founder Donald Howard wrote, 'Fundamentalism is intellectually sound. It has always prevailed in periods of great intellectual enlightenment. It is the only sound an logical solution to the existence of the universe… I am a fundamentalist. If I can be any more fundamental than fundamental, that is what I want to be.' Today, ACE views imparting these fundamental beliefs into children as its primary purpose.
"Howard later wrote 'We do not build Christian schools primarily to give a child the best education nor to teach him how to make a good living. Teaching him how to live and to love and serve God are our primary tasks.”
"He wasn’t kidding.
"I went to an ACE school for almost four years. By the time I left, I was certain that it was against God's will for governments to provide healthcare, evolution was a conspiracy to destroy Christianity, parents were morally required to spank their children, and science could prove that homosexuality was wrong. But worst of all was the feeling uneducated; I still struggle with self-conscious fears about gaps in my learning. ACE workbooks consist of simplistic fill-in-the-blank and multiple choice questions. And these questions are often hilariously, spectacularly bad.
"4th grade (9-10 years old)
"They’re particularly strong when it comes to people…
"Two. Dry. Ducks.
"There’s a bloody picture!
7th grade (12-13 years old)
9th grade (14-15 years old)
The title is actually On the Origin of Species…
"From a history PACE on the discovery and colonisation of America:
12th grade (17-18 years old)
"I found plenty more 12th grade questions with no plausible distractors, but none of them made me laugh. Stuff like this:
(Jonny Scaramanga is a PhD student at the Institute of Education, University of London, researching former students of Accelerated Christian Education. He is also writing a memoir about growing up a fundamentalist. He blogs at http://leavingfundamentalism.wordpress.com)
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It seems strange that almost all of the answers can be answered by the appropriate age groups without any studying necessary for a good, if not a perfect, score. It makes one wonder how these kids are going to score on their SATs or if Texas ACE students will even be allowed to go to any college other than Liberty University.
Christian schools aren't necessarily incompatible with the spirit of criminalizing Conservatism, except for the fact that the views of the adults that these kids grow up to will tend to be non-negotiable, and demands will be absolute..does that ring a bell for observers of the Tea Party dolts in Congress?
The question of churches in a Conservative-free society is a complicated one. Soviet Russia never succeeded in squelching the Orthodox Church there, though a Christian-free Communist China was quite successful in promulgating the atheism of Marx-Leninism.
If churches are allowed to continue after Conservatism is criminalized, our Conservative-free society will be sure of three policies though: the taxation of churches, the prohibition of politics in the pulpit, and the confiscating and redistribution of church assets back to the People.
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“We establish no religion in this country. We command no worship. We mandate
no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are and must remain separate.”
Ronald Reagan.
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Ronald Reagan.
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