The casting out of demons in a class of their own

There is a growing movement made up of fundamentalist Christians who believe the best schooling religious and otherwise -takes place at home. Gavin Evans reports.
THE JUNIOR CLASS at Swindon's Maranatha Christian Academy is on its usual best behaviour. When I enter the classroom, 27 children spring to attention, chanting in unison: "G0000d morning Mister Evans," before promptly resuming work under the watchful eye of the severe-looking Mrs Valerie Jones, a former Burundi missionary.
I peer over the children's shoulders to see what they're up to.
Hannah, a smiley 10-yearold, is completing an English lesson which begins, "Thank God for reptiles. Thank God for everything." Her chum, Stuart, is swatting up on the early Roman evangelists under a "busy bee" sign which says, "Be Polite, Be Neat, Be Honest".
Behind them is a huge poster of a bowl of fruit, illustrating the fruits of the spirit: "love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control" a taster of the 11 verses of Galatians which is the month's memorising quota.
Hannah is quick to sing the virtues of the institution: "It's easy to work here and I can fellowship with everyone".
To which Stuart adds: "There was lots of bullying at my state school, but here we have lots of Christian friends."
Others in this juvenile congregation tell me of "being reminded every day of the evil in the world", or of the need "to become more Christlike" and like Hannah, they're all big on "fellowshipping".
Across the passage of the stone walled farmhouse, 26 seniors, aged 11 to 17, are sitting in cubicles adorned with Bible verse posters, Bibles and tiny flags for raising when help is needed.
Now and then students rise from their warrens to use the speed reading computer or marking table. 80 per cent is required before they get a • shiny star, allowing them to proceed to the next "PACE" of their goal chart. They work at their own speed, the brighter ones devouring more workbooks and adding up to £500 to their £1,100 annual fees.
Later they are joined by Maranatha's bubbly 29-yearold co-founder, Joy Roderick, who delivers a lesson on "really modern history" (reporting on a school concert). Every story, she explains, should have three points and should be preceeded by the question: "Will it glorify God?"
A student whispers to his neighbour, but is cut off sharply by Miss Roderick: "Excuse me! If you nave a question, ask me!" The lad looks sheepishly at his well-polished shoes.
Offences like talking out of turn and leaving chairs out earn demerits three prompting a detention. Serious sins rudeness, lying, cheating are punished with blows to the buttocks from a "paddle" (a cricket bat-shaped US import). Male teachers hit boys; female teachers, girls, and the beatings are preceded by a prayer (as are most aspects of the school day).
"I believe in spare the rod and spoil the child," says Roderick, "but the rod has such overtones. It's loving discipline, and the child responds to love."
The headmaster, Cambridge graduate Rob Hodges, affirms this thinking with the air of a firm-but-kind paterfamilias: "Paddling is the ultimate punishment. Some younger students need it. We don't use it often, but when we do, we find the results are positive."
Hodges believes he is doing no more than abiding by the letter of the law, Old and New Testament. It is the same in each of the 281 Christian Education Europe (CEE) schools and homeschools which have popped up in Britain and Ireland over the last decade.
It's a rapidly expanding venture, with nearly 3,000 students signed up and new schools being set up in France, Germany, Switzerland and Malta, but by the standards of the Texans who coordinate the 10-country empire of the Accelerated Christian Education School of Tomorrow (to which CEE is affiliated), it remains small potatoes.
During a visit to South Africa in March, I discovered that ACE had drawn 7,000 students to 230 schools there since 1990. And I recently spoke to a Russian ACE principal who said there was a demand for 200 schools in the Urals alone, though he complained they were being "let down" by "corrupt princi pals who pretend to be Christians to get access to the money."
Joy Roderick, who graduated from a Christian college in Chattenooga, Tennessee, knows a bit more about Bible Belt expectations but sometimes finds them exasperating.
"When the Americans come over they think, hmm, what's wrong with this country? Why isn't it exploding like Russia or South Africa?" She shakes her head, reminding me in her Australian accent that "we British" are different not South African or Russian, and definitely not American.
"It's a multi-million dollar enterprise in the States 6,000 schools, tens of thou sands of homeschools, millions of children. Can you imagine? We'll never have the money they've got."
Their case against State education is that it has strayed from Christian principles into the ungodly realm of secular liberalism.
Driving me to Maranatha, one parent, Felicity Devine, tells me she removed her two teenagers from their State school in Cirencester because they taught all religions equally. "And this is supposed to be a Christian country. Can you believe it? Then I heard about CEE on Channel Four and my children were part of the first intake of 14 in 1990, and, Praise the Lord, it's worked out wonderfully!"
The students all come from "born again" families, most from churches practising the "gifts of the spirit" ("tongues, visions, divine healing and casting out demons).
Roderick explains this bias in terms of the "open mindedness" of these groups. "The Pentecostal Churches are more radical and eager to try something new. Their pastors say, 'let's go for it' because they've already broken from tradition, and their congregations are less conventional."
She stresses, however, that they accept children from "across the realm of Christianity". I ask her whether this includes Catholics, and she pauses, before replying hesitantly and diplomatically. "Urn, yes. Yeah. I suppose so. They're still Christian, aren't they?"
Constant reference is made to the need to go "back to basics" to create a system "destined to revolutionise education worldwide".
As ACE's founder Dr Donald R Howard puts it in his quaint Texanese: "In 1970 Mrs Howard and I recaptured the education strength of the past as practised in the one room school house".
Instead of brushing up on their Shakespeare, literature students will be faced with questions on the lives of evangelists like Billy Sunday, Adoniram Judson and JR Rice. In history, they learn of "The origins of collectivism in the revolt against Satan, The Fall and the Tower of Babel"; science modules include "Scientific Creationism: Proofs of Creator, Proofs of Flood" and they insist that "creation" was indeed a six day wonder.
Their understanding of the temporal word is informed by an abiding passion for anticommunism and doomsday scenarios.
An English module includes the intriguingly entitled, "None Dare Call it Conspiracy: the international power struggle behind everyday events", while a current CBE video highlights the "1917 Socialist Revolution" from which "Communism conquered half the world", and couples this with the "religion of secular humanism which invaded Western culture higher education."
This "product" is broken down into numbered portions: such as the "Five Laws of Learning" (not four, not six), the "Five Principles of Progress" (number four: How long is the stick?). Workbooks are full of "Wisdom Inserts", "Life Principles", "Character Trait" vignettes and little cartoons.
This fast-frozen approach involves measurable intakes of bite-sized chunks. Certainly they seem more adept at the "three R's" than their State school contemporaries but the emphatic religious content of what they absorb leaves little scope for a nuanced understanding of their subjects.
The system's architects, however, say that isolation from evil is the whole idea. "Bank tellers recognise counterfeit money, not because they handle it but because they have become so familiar with real money that the counterfeit is immediately recognised," Howard argu es.
"Likewise if a child is exposed only to truth, to Biblical decision making and Godly examples, he will immediately recognise sin and anti-Biblical concepts when confronted with them." Younger children, he adds, "don't need theological explanations; they just want to know how to be saved."
But even in this cocooned world with its stark choice between hell and heaven, a few go astray. "It's like being in the army,"says Roderick. "You can train a soldier to act a certain way, but ultimately it's up to him.
"Their parents feel disappointed of course, but their children have heard the truth and must answer to God, though I find that hard because I think, wow! they've been given .all this input and some still, pfoof! Its quite annoying."
The Education Act states that local authorities have a duty to ensure that home schooling is "suitable". If not, says DES representative Jackie Dowthwaite, "we can issue an attendance register and pressurise parents into mainstream education". In practice, however, this involves a single inspection a year. They also insist the curriculum is none of their business.
"It's up to them what they follow. They could put anything they want."
British universities, however, seem cautious about accepting the CEE claim that its academic qualifications are the equivalent of three A-level passes and seven GCSE's, with many refusing to consider them.
As Roderick concedes, "each student who wants to go to university will have to pioneer the way, which is
scary".
This may be one reason why the UK growth of this self-proclaimed "answer to the Crisis in Education", while impressive in its own terms, has not quite matched that in the USA or the developing world, though Roderick sees it more as a consequence of innate British reserve: "In America people say, 'it's new, let's try it' but it takes a lot longer here."
She pauses for a second before expressing a sentiment the movement's secular critics would heartily endorse: "The British mindset says, 'it's new, let's wait and see how it works for the next 20 years'. I suppose, that is wise in a lot of ways."