I remember it too well. In school, we couldn’t talk to each other during class. If we dared speak, we’d get nailed with a demerit, and three demerits meant detention. So we’d keep quiet and bury our heads in workbooks that told us Muslims and Buddhists are tricked by the devil and, thus, evil. We also learned that God created the world in seven days. And evolution was obviously a godless hoax. It never occurred to me to suggest otherwise.
You’d think this happened in some backwater Tennessee town in the ’20s. But that’s not where this happened. It was in Morinville, Alta., in the ’80s and ’90s, at a private school that used the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) curriculum — a Texas-based program that was neither “accelerated” nor Christian nor truly educational.
I spent eight years at that school, and the recent debate over the government’s disastrous Bill 44 — a bill that would insert into Alberta’s human rights law a parent’s right to exempt their kids from public school class discussion on sexuality, sexual orientation or religion — brings back a flood of memories, many of them disturbing.
Our workbooks had little comic strips. These comics showed white kids and black kids who lived in a nauseatingly saccharine place called Highland City. These kids sometimes intermingled, but they were shown at separate schools. I’m not making this up. Separate schools for kids of different colour.
Somehow this was taught in the ’80s and ’90s, even though a 1984 audit by the Alberta government found the curriculum showed “a degree of insensitivity towards blacks, Jews and natives.” Auditors also deemed its science program “unacceptable,” since the material denounced historical events and scientific phenomena (like evolution) as “godless,” “anti-biblical” and “foolish.”
Despite the auditors’ warnings, this twisted material was still taught near the end of the 20th century. Hardly a bright spot in Alberta history.
Ron Ghitter gets it. The former Conservative MLA headed up the government investigation into ACE and the other curricula — “indoctrination” programs, he recalls. “I still have the scars on my back,” jokes the former Canadian senator. But when it comes to Bill 44, Ghitter isn’t laughing. “The public school system should always be open to pluralistic thoughts and attitudes and critical thinking…. We’re kind of stepping back into the Middle Ages a little with legislation like that.” Or stepping back into Morinville in the ’90s, where talk of sex and gays and evolution was shielded from our good Christian ears because that’s what our parents preferred.
There are plenty of logistical concerns about how Bill 44 would be interpreted. Will teachers be hauled before the human rights commission for talking about gay people without notifying parents? What if a gay teacher talks about his or her partner in class? “Where do you stop on something like that?” wonders Ghitter. “Once you open that Pandora’s box, it goes on and on.”
What’s really bothersome, though, is this idea that parents should shelter their kids from class discussion on the Reformation or gender roles or — gasp! — the role of gay people in society. I got sledgehammered with anti-gay, anti-science propaganda for eight years, and while I recovered somewhat from the experience, looking back I wish I had a more balanced education.
Sure, parents may disagree with some of what their kids are taught in school. That’s a good thing. It gives parents and children a chance to discuss and flesh out their values and beliefs. “The idea that you can put your head in the sand and say, ‘I don’t want to be exposed to anything that I don’t antecedently agree with’ is extremely troubling,” says Dan Shapiro with the Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership. “It doesn’t speak well to educating good critical thinkers and good democratic citizens for the future.”
The government has a choice. It can pass Bill 44, striking another blow against critical thinking in schools and extending one of the bleaker elements of its history. Or it can write a new history where dissent and debate are valued. As someone who missed out on that experience during my school years, I hope the Conservatives make the right choice.
Comments: 4
Tyler Kinch wrote:
on May 15th, 2009 at 12:19pm Report Abuse
Jeremy Klaszus wrote:
I can say, though, that the people who worked at the Morinville school were good folk, despite the twisted curriculum they taught. They genuinely cared about us. I respect my old teachers. I like to think their goodness has informed my life, has somehow led me to search for what is true and real. Which is ironic, since the ACE curriculum didn't allow for any critical thinking at all.
All that to say: I'm still trying to figure it out.
on May 17th, 2009 at 5:39pm Report Abuse
Canadiankgb wrote:
As a social worker I often meet people who have struggled with a variety of forms of marginalization in our society. Youth are so much more knowledgable and less homophobic then past generations. I hope that youth also speak up because it is their bright minds that will lose the chance to engage in discussion and discourse in such relevant areas.
Thanks for you thoughts....
on May 17th, 2009 at 11:27pm Report Abuse
daniel dwv wrote:
I am an Accelerated Christian Education survivor as well. If you don't mind, I would like to share my experience with you and your readers, not only about the PACE books and curriculum, but also other aspects of the schools that incorporate this program.
I originally enrolled in a school around 1987 that taught this curriculum in what was supposed to be my 3rd grade. After my initial enrollment testing, they labeled me a "genius" and skipped me two grades.
So everyone thought I was brilliant, including myself, but in hindsight I realize they skipped me only because their school was two years behind what normal schools are required to teach their students.
Being a 7-year-old in class with other kids who were two years older, one-foot taller and who all were under the assumption that I was smarter then they were... needless to say, I was not the most popular person.
But instead of excelling, which everyone had the pre-conceived notion that I would accomplish, the A.C.E. system really only taught me to do the bare minimum to pass, or cheat. As long as I memorized a few bible verses, no one seemed to care. That is, until 7th or 8th grade, when they discovered that I couldn't do simple 4th grade mathematics.
Then instead of tutoring me, the instructors told my mother that I had demons in my head that torment me and distract me from learning. Which I believe would be called A.D.D.D. (Attention Deficit Disorder by Demons)
My mother, the naive Christian woman that she was, believed them and allowed them to put me through a series of exorcisms where the pastor, principal, instructors and elders of the church would attempt to force me to throw up these demons by placing their hands on my head and speaking in tongues.
Of course, they weren't successful, I never vomited any red or green demons... or even blue ones. So being 10-years-old, and completely brainwashed and indoctrinated in this Pentecostal cult, I believed that I was possessed and eventually began acting like it.
They were also very adamant about discouraging me to be artistic. I would draw a lot instead of doing my work, and at a young age had a lot of talent. Instead of encouragement and support, I was punished, not only with demerits and detentions, but humiliation. The monitors or supervisors would tell all of the students to come to my cubical to criticize my drawings. Then lecture us on how important it is that we need to study our “science” books that didn’t teach science at all instead of “doodling nonsense”.
When I didn’t stop I would get suspended, and when my art evolved to carving demon faces on my desk I was expelled.
In the 6 impressionable years I went to this school, going through each ridiculous PACE booklet after another. In which the only thing they really teach you to become or tell you you can be is a missionary. I do not remember one piece of solid information that held educational value, I can however, recite you all the books of the bible in order... which is super impressive at job interviews.
I really only learned how to manipulate trust, to cheat on tests, to lie, and to take advantage of the system. Luckily, I learned how to read and write at a different establishment, because if that weren’t the case, I doubt very much that I would even be able to process my opinions and thoughts and convert them to text in what I am writing to you now.
The day I was expelled, the principal said to my mom, “Send him to public school for a while, he’ll be begging to come back in a week.”
Fortunately, after having that experience I was motivated to attain knowledge and education when it was finally handed to me in public school and college. I am successful today, which I credit to the A.C.E. system and my elementary Christian school, not for giving me an educational foundation, not for teaching me the tools I needed at a young age, and definitely not for it’s realistic vision of society, but for accidentally planting a seed that grew into a rebellious monster, giving me the thirst to have my questions answered and not settling for “Because God makes it that way.”
on Jun 8th, 2009 at 1:59pm Report Abuse
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