Many South Africans are opting to send their children for a Christian education, but this does not mean the rod is spared at these schools, writes Gavin Evans
WHEN Pastor Steve Maritz tells you that “if little Johnny needs a hiding, he’ll get one”, he wears the smile of a benign paterfamilias.
This middle-aged founder of the Calvary Christian School in Nelspruit places great weight on what he calls, “disciplining the Christian way”, and reminds you that, following the Old Testament book of Proverbs, this means “the rod is not spared”.
At the Calvary Assembly of God, like most of the other charismatic and Pentecostal groups which are adopting the Texas-based Accelerated Christian Education School of Tomorrow programme, they take the letter of the Biblical law pretty literally. When the Word says the world was created in six days, they take it and teach it as such — to several million students in tens of thousands of schools and home schools in 106 countries around the world.
But on the subject of the “rod” they allow themselves a little deviation. “Most schools use the plank or the paddle. We recommend a maximum of five strokes,” Maritz explains helpfully.
He is quick to add, however, that love is the essence of the exercise.
“It must be clear in the child’s mind the connection between the offence and the discipline, and that no anger is involved. X behaviour has produced Y result and I am the instrument to produce this result. So we discuss it with the child, give the hiding and then pray with the child, and the result is that he leaves my office feeling loved.”
But, the pastor emphasises, this is a rare occurrence. At most of the 230 ACE schools in South Africa it is a requirement that at least one parent of each child is a “born again” Christian, and they make it very clear to parent and child alike that the purpose of the exercise is to bring each child to the point of a “personal faith with our Lord Jesus Christ”.
A day spent with the 100 students at Alberton Christian Academy suggests it is succeeding in this aim. The children are extremely well behaved and swear by the system.”You get much more personal attention here than in a government school, and they explain things nicely,” says Jessica Bothma (13), a three-year veteran of the ACE system.
“Also, the Christian aspect is very important because it brings you more towards God.”
The other aim is to give them an “accelerated” (go at your own pace), education with great stress placed on the fundamentals, like the three R’s. Its great educational advantage is that it allows children to progress rapidly in subjects where they are strong and slowly in those where they are weak, without holding back anyone else in the class.
ACE South Africa is one of the three fastest growing branches of this massive American educational empire (the others being Russia and Georgia). It has expanded from a base of 13 schools in 1986 to a current total of 230 schools and pre-schools (including 50 home schools for go-it-alone parents) and over 6 000 students.
This year 42 new ACE teachers are being trained, compared with an average of 20 for the last few years. “We have experienced a real boom recently,” says the organisation’s national administrator Graham Yoko. “This is because of the moral decay in society which has led parents to seek a genuine Christian alternative in which students are taught to live their lives from God’s point of view, and to understand their purpose in
At Alberton Christian Academy the children sit silently in cubicles decorated with chocolate box Christian posters — a puppy with the slogan “Jesus loves me no matter what”, for instance. Each student works on a “Pace” (a module of work set each week), and require over 80 percent before they are allowed to place a red, silver or gold star on their chart, and progress. Each child is required to learn a set of Bible verses each month — 24 for seniors — and some boast of learning whole Bible books, King James Version, by heart.
When they want to speak to a teacher or to be tested they raise either their mini-South African flag, or their empty cross flag.
“Merits” for consistent performance earn “priveleges” like longer breaks, while the stick side of the equation begins with demerits for offences like not pushing one’s chair back into place. “Three demerits equals one detention; six entitles you to be paddled, with six paddles the maximum,” Alberton headboy Jason Dell explains.
Fees are R365 a month plus about R70 on books and materials. The curriculum is full of the stuff that would make Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich smile, and probably does. While placing great stress on computer literacy and the learning methods of the United States management consultant circuit — cartoons, tapes, visual aids and plenty of soundbites – – it’s dominant thrust is “back to basics” conservative fundamentalism: creationism, nuclear family values, virulent opposition to socialism, communism and “secular humanism” (which are viewed as part of the same, insiduous, atheist package) and support for free enterprise.
As its Texan founder, Dr Donald R Howard, put it: “In 1970 Mrs Howard and I recaptured the education strength of the past as practiced in the one-room schoolhouse”. Instead of brushing up on their Shaw, Shakespeare or Austin, senior level literature students will find themselves answering questions on the life of one Billy Sunday, or Corrie ten Boom, or Adoniram Judson or JR
In history they learn about “Missions in emerging nations”, or “the origins of collectivism in the revolt against Satan, The Fall and the Tower of Babel”; science modules include “The Limitations of Science” and “Scientific Creationism: Proofs of Creator, Proofs of Flood”.
Given all this, it is hardly surprising that several South African universities and other tertiary institutions have been reluctant to accept the ACE diploma as the equivalent of a matric.
But despite its rightwing roots in the American Bible Belt, South Africa’s peculiar political context has, at least until now, made the ACE experience a distinctly anti-establishment one.
>From the start 12 years ago ACE insisted on being non- racial, and that meant defying apartheid education authorities by admitting black children. This prompted a state of hostilities with the old Transvaal Education Department in the mid to late Eighties. Over 40 schools, including the Rhema Christian School, left ACE and accepted the TED curriculum, though in the past two years several have returned to the ACE fold.
Today, according to Yoko, over 50 percent of ACE’s South African students are black (African). At Alberton, however, they’ve experienced a reversal in this trend. “We lost a lot of black students this year because conventional education in the state schools is now freely available,” says Poulter.
At which point Pastor Maritz cuts in: “Yes, but that just goes to show. The parents’ motivation was just education in English, and not Christian education, which is what it should be.”