Aram’s Progress Part 3

This is the final part of the excerpts I’m publishing from Aram McLean’s forthcoming book, Aram’s Progress: A Boy in the Hands of an Angry World. Aram went to an Accelerated Christian Education school, like me, and these excerpts give a striking idea what that’s like.

This part ends with a story that some of you might find incredible. Even I am unsure what to make of it. On balance, though, I’m inclined to believe it. Part of the difficulty I face with this blog is getting people with no experience of this kind of religious fanaticism to comprehend the scale of it – it must often seem exaggerated. I believe Aram’s story because I could believe it of fundamentalist leaders I encountered, including my own school teachers. My pastor’s daughter confided in me that his idea of a reasonable punishment included dragging his own son – by the ear – along the landing and down the stairs. So, frankly, nothing would surprise me.

All three parts of Aram’s story are here.

Part 1, in which Aram explains how a learning center [sic] operates

Personal little flags were heavily utilized in the ACE system. To go up to the scoring station to self-check your PACE work so far, or to use the toilet, you unfurled a Canadian flag above your desk. If your bladder was full, you could only pray that the volunteering monitors and regular supervisors weren’t too tied up with other students, or each other. God only knew if He’d get them to answer your plea in time, to allow you to go and plop your holy offering into the sacred bowl of the ceramic alter.

To ask a question about a particular subject – say for example, “but doesn’t the story of Bathsheba mean that King David was a blatant murderer?” – you had to put up a so-called Christian flag; basically a little white number with a small red cross atop a blue corner. You were supposed to work on your other subjects while you waited – like maybe your Social Studies PACE which was informing you that this time they’d found the Ark on Ararat for sure, or your Biology PACE which was letting you know that mental illnesses were caused by demon possession and only prayer could cure them – until finally a passing supervisor or monitor kicked you out of your seat to lend a hand. 

Aram’s Progress, Part 2

This is part two of my serialisation of excerpts from Aram McLean’s forthcoming memoir. For all parts, see here.

My ACE school moved a lot in the early years. The first place to accept it was a small church which also believed in a good Christian upbringing for every child. As such, they let us roll our rows of custom-made little kid offices into their back room. They also let us use their large cold basement for gym class, awards banquets, and other important recreations.

After two years in their backroom, the little church wasn’t so happy about us anymore. Our principal, Mr Jordan, may have rubbed a few of the Elders the wrong way, but I couldn’t say for sure. Perhaps they simply got tired of the seeing children wandering about the corridors looking shell-shocked, like they’d just seen a holy ghost or something.

The Doctrines of Grace had certainly become a hot topic of contention that second year as well. Serious rifts split down the middle of the little school and more than a few parents decided to take their kids out of it, by their own free will.

Various locations around town followed as believers came together and then disagreed, and we carefully packed our plywood rows of offices around to each new place. We took over a farmhouse for a while, then a couple adjoining rooms in a motel, and finally the lower half of a family home. It helped that we weren’t a large school, and that turnover was high.

My own life during this time often seemed to be a series of near misses, combined with more than a few direct hits. And right from the early days of the first church building’s little backroom, things didn’t feel too good.

 

One recess during this early time, I was playing with my seven-year-old brother Devon, when Mr Jordan unexpectedly stepped into the room. He smiled at us in a very strange way. Our laughter froze in both our throats.

Aram’s Progress, part 1

Hey hey. A new year treat for you, readers. Aram McLean, a reader from Canada, has sent me excerpts from his forthcoming memoir for your general edification. He’s sent a lot of stuff, so I’m breaking it into parts.

It’s difficult to convey to someone who wasn’t there the soul-destroying banality of day-to-day life in an ACE school. It isn’t the dogma that gets you down; it’s the rules – an avalanche of unnecessary legalism. And if you don’t follow them, it’s not just the punishments, it’s the endless lectures, the time lost while someone explains how filling in your goal card according to ACE procedures is crucial to the condition of your immortal soul. It isn’t, of course, but it is crucial to making you an obedient servant of God, who can be moulded into the person ACE wants you to be.

I think Aram’s done a great job of capturing that.

The other thing I’m struck by is how consistent the reports I get from ACE schools are. Aram’s Mr. Jordan could have taught at my school. Given that training for ACE schools is incredibly brief and not centralised, I’m amazed at how effectively almost all the schools seem to have the same atmosphere.

Part 1, in which Aram attends a most Holy school

Life during the ACE school days, back when the years passed like decades, wasn’t just about intolerance towards the damned, of course. As well there was always a year-end Awards Banquet, when the student with the consistently neatest office or the nicest penmanship or the perfect attendance or the most Bible verses memorized in total, and so on, would hear her or his name called out in front of their peers and elders, and be able to step proudly, though not too proudly, up to the front to accept their medal, knowing that yes, when it came to things like tidiness and/or anal retention, by God they were gliding right beside Him, in that moment.

Our workbooks were called PACE’s and, using a specially-made goal card, the first order of business every morning, after the aesthetic inspection and singing and sermonizing was done, was to write down our total page number goals for each subject for the day. There were Math PACE’s and English PACE’s, American History PACE’s and Bible History PACE’s, Word Building/Etymology PACE’s and Science PACE’s, et cetera. Everything they thought you needed to know. There were no labs or group assignments, no discussion or brainstorming sessions in general, and praying was encouraged as a legitimate teaching aid.

Ex-con opens new fundamentalist school in Dover

There’s more bad news for ACE in the current issue of Private Eye. On page 36, there’s an article about Pieter Van Rooyen, the convicted slave master who opened an ACE school in Dover in January this year. Disappointingly, the phrase “slave wages” doesn’t appear in this story (as it does in most other coverage about Van Rooyen), but otherwise it’s pretty great. I won’t reproduce it all here for copyright reasons, but here’s a taster:

From Private Eye issue 1369, 27 June – 10 July 2014.

What Private Eye didn’t report—and I can exclusively reveal—is that in addition to being a criminal, Van Rooyen is also a conspiracy nut and a plagiarist.

Even the vicar can’t stand ACE

Happy new year everyone. I hope December treated you well and you’re ready for another year of fighting the hydra that is Christian fundamentalism. I told you that this year I wanted to co-operate more with sympathetic Christians, so here’s a statement of intent: a guest post from a priest. To the kind of fundamentalists who think that baptism by sprinkling is a damnable heresy, this won’t make much difference. But to parents who are on the fence about whether to choose Accelerated Christian Education (ACE), or to those who believe that this website is simply a crusade to destroy religious freedom, I hope this will make you think twice.

Today’s post is by the Reverend Oliver Harrison, vicar at Holy Trinity Wilnecote, an Anglican church. Oliver enjoys shaving and dislikes ACE. Say hi everyone.

“This is why everyone hates atheists”

I’ll be honest: The reaction from ACE’s defenders to my last post was not uniformly positive.

It began with this:

Accelerated Christian Education

For its first year, this blog focused on Accelerated Christian Education, a cult-like fundamentalist education system where children work individually, in silence, at isolated desks. The science curriculum emphasises Young Earth Creationism and mocks evolution. The politics curriculum teaches the views of the Christian Right.

You will find all my posts on the subject by visiting the Accelerated Christian Education category.

In 2009, the government agency UK NARIC validated the ICCE, a qualification based on ACE, saying it was on a par with A levels. Having been through the horrendously abusive education that is ACE, I knew something had to be done, and I began campaigning. In 2012, NARIC completed a second study, and again validated the ICCE as comparable with A levels.

Here are some of the main posts to help you get your head around why this is important:

• What is Accelerated Christian Education?

• ACE is racist (although not as racist as it used to be)
• ACE teaches lies as fact (including the claim that no nuclear fusion occurs in the sun)
• ACE indoctrinates political propaganda
• ACE perverts the scientific method
• ACE teaches MORE lies as fact (including the claim that science proves homosexuality is a learned behaviour)
• ACE indoctrinates MORE political propaganda (all state health care is against God’s will)
• ACE is educationally unsound according to educational experts (every other post – see here, here, here, and here)
• Christian educators and theologians agree that ACE is unsound
• ACE explicitly teaches children to ignore reason and evidence.
• ACE promotes intolerance (on the IOE London blog)
• Historically, ACE has advocated strict corporal punishment; many of its schools still do.

• Accelerated Christian education validated by government agency Gives some reasons why ACE is academically sub-par, regardless of content.

Eventually, the whole thing got so ridiculous that I’ve temporarily retired from blogging about it.

Survivor stories

I have also been collecting survivor stories from former ACE students. I’m still doing this. If you have experience of ACE, please tell me about it, and I will post it on the blog. Here are links to all the ones I’ve posted so far:

• Top 3 ACE survivor stories
• More ACE survivor stories (the third is a harrowing case of sexual abuse)
• Being made to feel like you don’t exist (David Waldock; describes the experience of a gay ACE student)
• ACE and Bible Verse Bookmarks (Rebecca Arman)
• ACE and the suppression of women (Lana)
• Aram’s Progress (Aram McLean, in three parts)
• Be careful, or your karma will run over your dogma (anonymous)
• Speed reading and dinosaur riding (Tim Reinert)
• A collection of ACE/ School of Tomorrow survivor stories (multiple; includes some positive ones)
• The dogma that followed me home (Cat Givens)
• ACE takes over Reddit; survivor stories abound (anonymous)
• Pinochet good; gay bad (Greg)
• A reverence for received knowledge (Matthew Pocock)
• The best email ever (name and address supplied)
• Putting the fundamental in fundamentalist (“Sheldon Cooper”)
• Former ACE employee turns whistleblower (Christine Gregg)

In the interests of fairness, I also post the stories of people who are in favour of ACE, although I get much less of these:

• In defence of ACE (several)

• The benefits and the workings of ACE (Monica Stringer)
• The case for Accelerated Christian Education: parental freedom (Lyndell)

Other articles

I’ve also written online about ACE for the Guardian, the Times Education Supplement, and a few other places.

• Nessie as evidence against evolution… and five odder things kids are taught (Guardian)
• Are fundamentalist schools up to standard? (Guardian)
• Fundamental errors with evangelist schooling (TES)
• A Fundamental Problem (New Humanist)

There are also good articles by other authors:

• Divine and rule (Guardian)
• Fight for the truth about old Noah (TES)
• God, Gays, and Government (FFWD Weekly)
• Fundamentalists fighting spiritual battle in parliament (Telegraph)
• The Loch Ness Monster ate my A level (Telegraph)
• The Loch Ness Monster, in a science textbook (Washington Post)

Please get in touch if you would like to write a survivor story for the blog.

More ACE survivor stories

Tomorrow, I will be posting my last blog about ACE for the foreseeable future. I’ll explain why in that post. I will still be accepting guest posts on the subject.

Now seems like a good time to wrap this up with a few more ACE survivor stories submitted as comments on the blog. Immediately after this I’ll post a compilation of comments in favour of ACE.

Jennifer Hoy

My mother enrolled me into an ACE school in 6th grade. At first I liked it but as I got older I began to see how ridiculous the PACE system was. The paces were so outdated. Everything we were learning was supposedly through the Biblical perspective. We had to wear uniforms. The girls could only wear skirts or gouchos. No pants! The teachers were just members of the church. No formal training. Reading some of the other posts I have to agree that this type of set up was very isolating. The only good thing I can say is that it taught me to work well on my own. I graduated Valedictorian in 1989. I did not go to college. I was afraid to try because I thought they would laugh at my diploma! I am 42 and am still learning things that I should have learned in high school. I feel that I was robbed of my youth and education. I feel I could have been so much more in life. The school and all of it’s forced beliefs have affected me in so many ways. I am still a Christian but my views of what that really means has changed. I would never send my kids to this type of school. These schools are a waste of time.

James M.

Hi Jonny.

Just discovered your site today. I attended ACE schools in the US off and on from Kindergarten through 7th grade. The experience was, as you say, horrendous, and as an educational system, utterly worthless. I just wanted to add that in the schools I attended, the “office” model was not just used in the mornings, but was an all day long experience. There was no relief from this stifling arrangement save for a few 10-15 minute long breaks and the lunch hour. Occasionally, the “supervisor” would address the group, and we would turn around in our chairs to listen, but that was the only social interaction allowed while in the learning center. I’m curious as to what other kinds of work were allowed in your ACE experience.

I could go on for days about the horrors of ACE, but I’ll stop here. Thanks for this blog. I’m sorry you had to endure the nightmare that is ACE, but it’s comforting to know there are others out there who understand the abuse I endured under this asinine system.

Christopher (this one is longer but worth the read. It’s one of the most powerful survivor stories we’ve had. Trigger warning: sexual abuse)

Survivor Story: ACE and Bible Verse Bookmarks

“I was shunned, but survived”. I’m thrilled to present today’s guest post, from Rebecca Arman of Tasmania. Rebecca mentioned to me in emails how difficult her experience of fundamentalism was to get over, and she was unsure about writing her story, so I hope you’ll all leave comments to thank her for her honesty and courage.

Of all my stories of my past life challenges,  I find this one a very difficult one to tell. Perhaps I’m embarrassed knowing what I know now, to remember those days. And perhaps I still feel loyal to my partner and a reluctance to dishonour him. But I make this bit clear. I do not dishonour him. I loved him dearly and fought hard with him to beat the tumour that took his life. I did not want him to die, nor my children to grow up without a father. But sometimes men make bad decisions. And he sure did make one bad one…..

I am writing this in a lovely bakery near Salamanca market on a balmy Hobart Saturday afternoon. I’m feeling at peace, in my new independent travel mode, enjoying the buzz and beauty of Battery Point. With old buildings containing galleries and shops on one side, a sea port on another, a mountain backdrop, and green parks to laze in, it is a stunning part of Tasmania I rarely knew when I lived here years ago. Nearly 30 years has passed since my first baby was born on the opposite part of Tasmania in very different circumstances. ACE is Accelerated Christian Education, and it is still taught in church run schools in Western Countries today.

When my first baby was born, my husband had started a job as a teacher in a Baptist Church School that used ACE curriculum. During the years leading up to this I was the only daughter of a strict, verbally and emotionally abusive father and an unhappy, resentful mother. When  I met my children’s father, he was a ‘normal’, fun loving, attractive, fit, kind hearted person, a graduate from teachers college seeking employment. A few years later I had involuntarily become a fundamentalist Christian  teacher/pastors wife, and  the indoctrination of those years had a huge tole on me. Many years of counselling, thinking, reading and reprogramming was needed before I became a real person. I drifted into early marriage after my loneliness of teenage bully years, which together with my parents nightly fighting and totally dysfunctional relationship, had created an insecurity and void in my life. I had no confidence, and my friends were few. Nothing I did could please my parents and I felt I didn’t fit in or belong anywhere.  I was unloved, so I married, for love, had babies to be loved, and accepted, and before I knew it my life spun out of control and I was in a community where I knew little of life outside this church school. It killed my soul and broke my heart, but I recovered. 

A step-by-step guide to beating children, by ACE

Last week, I finally got my hands on something I’ve been trying to get for more than ten years. This.

This is the correct way to beat a child

Yes, that’s a picture of a kid being bent over a chair so he can be beaten. This picture is from page 118 of the School of Tomorrow Procedures Manual (part 1, 1998 revision). That’s the guide that all Accelerated Christian Education schools are required to follow in running their schools. I was 13 the first time I saw this picture, and I found it shocking even though, as a good Bible-believing Christian, I knew it was God’s will for children to be spanked.

Critics of my blog often tell me that I am wrong to highlight instances of child abuse in ACE schools. “Child abuse happens in all kinds of schools”, they tell me. “You’re just trying to smear ACE”.

To those critics I say: Look at this picture, and then tell me that. Yes, child abuse happens in all kinds of places. But most of those places don’t consider it to be one of their main selling points.