(See how bad my christian school education was?)

The school itself creates a shuttered environment that means students are completely unprepared for the real world outside of the school, and now, with it teaching from kinder to yr 12, that situation can only worsen.

Teachers don’t (or at least, didn’t while I was there) need to have qualifications to teach, they only had to go to the right church.

This led to the situation of a VCE business studies class being without a teacher for the majority of a year, because the teacher concerned simply stopped coming- unable to deal with the pressures of handling a group of teenagers- even basically well behaved ones, like my year level. Although, to be fair, none of us ever told the school he hadn’t been showing up for classes, and used the time as a free period.

I found that the school, while preaching love and tolerance actually practised something from the opposite end of the spectrum. Closed mindedness, bigotry, elitism and promote fear and paranoia about anyone who might be different, or believe different things- Out of curiosity one day, I compared my experience at Chairo against a cult-behavioural checklist.

It scored frighteningly well as a cult-like organisation.

While I was at Chairo, there was no mangling of the national anthem. If this really happens, I am deeply ashamed of having attended Chairo. Well, more than usual, anyway.

Nancy Alcorn gave 2300 to Mike Huckabee, if this is the same Nancy Alcorn (Huckabee was the most radical rightist of our 2008 campaign).

John Weaver

I absolutely love the comparison drawn between commercial television and funding of religious schools

One: I object to anyone stuffing around with the words to our national anthem. Unless it’s me. And I’m drunk at the time. And it’s funny (at least in my opinion).

I’m certainly not approving of anyone changing them for religious propaganda reasons.

Two: The problem with schools like this receiving government money is actually far more serious than you think – essentially, the state, territory and federal governments are propping up an unviable sector. The argument is that parents who send their kids to private schools, religious or otherwise, are still paying taxes for school usage. Which is utter rubbish.

To put this in comparison, if we apply the same criteria to TV, Seven, Nine and Ten should get the same amount of government funding as the ABC and SBS. After all, their viewers pay taxes for TV broadcasting as well.

Could you imagine what a public outcry there would be if governments reduced their funding to public hospitals and sent it to private ones instead? I’m not sure why private schools get special treatment over other private sectors.

As long as governments provide funding to private schools willy-nilly, this kind of brainwashing will continue to proliferate.

Welcome to the blog.

I don’t have the ACE materials in front of me so my experience is based on the Compass program and quotes form wikipedia (wonderful font of accuracy that it is).

I respectfully disagree on the brainwashing being dependent on the teaching/school.

The children are essentially learning from a workbook whose focus is christian/bilical. My impression was that each book contained a strong focus on biblical teachings/sayings (cherry picked of course)interwoven with the subject. There would be no focus on stoning unruly children I expect.

I see this as immersing the child in a particular world view and brainwashing them. Your definition may differ.

Add to this the fact that they don’t allow outsiders or those of different cultures to mix and the child is being reared in isolation.

I would love to examine the materials closely.

Chappy,

My impression is that it allows for basic skills development, basic literacy and numeracy, but that it falls down on development of critical thinking. So your kid may be able to read and write but might really struggle outside of a closed christian context.