Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) is a publisher of Christian homeschool literature. The company is based in Hendersonville, Tennessee with a warehouse at its former headquarters in Lewisville, Texas.
ACE was founded in 1970 by Donald and Esther Howard. Mrs. Howard took over as head of the company in 1997.[1]
ACE operates from a Biblical literalist, Young-Earth Creationist philosophy, similar to the majority of Christian homeschool products.
They differ, however, in that they do not publish traditional textbooks. Instead, for each subject ACE produces a series of smaller texts, called Packets of Accelerated Christian Education (PACEs), which are to be studied on a self-paced basis.
Character development is a key component of each PACE, enforced by a series of comics featuring characters who age-progress as the students progress.[2] The characters all have surnames with some character trait, similar to the naming convention used in Pilgrim's Progress:
Though Christian homeschool literature is generally criticized by liberal Christianity and atheists,[5] simply based on its content, some portions of ACE literature are rightly criticized. Most notably is the racial segregation of the characters in three separate communities, with no crossover between them: Highland (white characters), Harmony (black characters), and Heartsville (Hispanic and Asian characters).[6][7]