Scientology's controversial push to enter schools with learning material — including in Australia

[CommunicatorIC]

Scientology's controversial push to enter schools with learning material — including in Australia.

A thorough and well-researched story.

ABC News Australia: Scientology's controversial push to enter schools with learning material — including in Australia

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05...ush-educational-materials-in-schools/11069666

Pacific Beat
By Sean Mantesso
Updated about 2 hours ago

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Key points:

An investigation revealed that Scientology material is being taught in six Samoan schools

Experts warn Scientology is covertly pushing its ideology in schools across the world

It uses affiliate groups like Applied Scholastics and ABLE to obscure its involvement

There are two schools here in Australia that use the works of Applied Scholastics

In February last year, Samoa's Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele was photographed alongside Warren Meyer, the "humanitarian ambassador" for a group called Applied Scholastics.

The two were holding a textbook titled Learning How To Learn — one of 10,000 copies gifted to the small Pacific island nation.

But the friendly photograph belies a more bizarre and complex reality.

The much-needed educational resources for the children of Samoa were in fact books containing the teachings of L Ron Hubbard, the founder of the controversial Church of Scientology.

It has now been revealed — thanks to an investigation by the Samoa Observer published earlier this week — that there are at least six schools in Samoa using these teaching methods.

Applied Scholastics has also told the ABC that more than a dozen Samoan educators have travelled to the group's headquarters in Missouri for training.

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[JustSheila]

Underhanded, sneaky, conniving, manipulative, misrepresenting, lying, stealing CULT OF SCIENTOLOGY!

 

[learningconcern]

something that is so frustrating to me (context: i am a family member of current scns and not an ex-scn myself... so excuse if i do have missing details and if i ever speak inaccurately) is that, as someone in the education field, i have been well trained on the ideas LRH puts forward especially regarding the "three barriers" to education. there is no reason for scn to invade the education sphere with their lingo. their ideas are just, if you strip them of their scientologese and processes, the basic steps for teaching! lrh did not invent the idea that students need kinesthetic input to learn effectively, for example. having scientologists and scientology lingo/doctrines enter the education sphere is actually quite vapid. what they will truly be offering is a kiddie version of scientologese and an introduction to the format of scientology processes, like the rigidity found in auditing. it is an attempt at getting the youth. the front organizations the CoS manages are all warning signs that scn wants to enter all realms of public consciousness and not be stopped. when it comes to influencing children, the education sphere is their best bet.

 

[Bill]

something that is so frustrating to me (context: i am a family member of current scns and not an ex-scn myself... so excuse if i do have missing details and if i ever speak inaccurately) is that, as someone in the education field, i have been well trained on the ideas LRH puts forward especially regarding the "three barriers" to education. there is no reason for scn to invade the education sphere with their lingo. their ideas are just, if you strip them of their scientologese and processes, the basic steps for teaching! lrh did not invent the idea that students need kinesthetic input to learn effectively, for example. having scientologists and scientology lingo/doctrines enter the education sphere is actually quite vapid. what they will truly be offering is a kiddie version of scientologese and an introduction to the format of scientology processes, like the rigidity found in auditing. it is an attempt at getting the youth. the front organizations the CoS manages are all warning signs that scn wants to enter all realms of public consciousness and not be stopped. when it comes to influencing children, the education sphere is their best bet.

You are correct that Scientology has no place in educating children.

However, a lot of ex-Scientologists (and others) seem to think that Hubbard's "Study Tech" is mostly harmless and, well, standard teaching techniques. I strongly disagree.

It isn't just "looking up words" and "providing mass", etc. It is much, much worse. To wit:

• Looking up every definition of a word (and then every definition of the words in the definition). This makes "looking up words" an arduous task. All a person actually has to do is understand the word in the context it is used. Hubbard's "Study Tech" makes study difficult and unpleasant.
• Authoritarian, dogmatic study. With Hubbard's "Study Tech", the source material is always correct, questions and confusions are the student's fault. Hubbard's "Study Tech" is indoctrination and suppresses questions.
• Students are not taught logic, skepticism, argumentation, judgement. These are the key learning skills that all students must learn. Hubbard's "Study Tech" creates robots.
• Doing "clay demos" and using "demo kits" is an artificial construct that is, except in a few instances, just silly. Students just end up "fiddling" with paperclips. In learning to use a chain saw, one should have a chain saw, not clay demo a chain saw. Hubbard's "Study Tech" adds strange, unnecessary complications to study.

My contention is that Hubbard's "Study Tech" isn't a benign version of "standard teaching techniques", it is actually harmful and destroys good student habits.

 

[learningconcern]

You are correct that Scientology has no place in educating children.

However, a lot of ex-Scientologists (and others) seem to think that Hubbard's "Study Tech" is mostly harmless and, well, standard teaching techniques. I strongly disagree.

It isn't just "looking up words" and "providing mass", etc. It is much, much worse. To wit:

• Looking up every definition of a word (and then every definition of the words in the definition). This makes "looking up words" an arduous task. All a person actually has to do is understand the word in the context it is used. Hubbard's "Study Tech" makes study difficult and unpleasant.
• Authoritarian, dogmatic study. With Hubbard's "Study Tech", the source material is always correct, questions and confusions are the student's fault. Hubbard's "Study Tech" is indoctrination and suppresses questions.
• Students are not taught logic, skepticism, argumentation, judgement. These are the key learning skills that all students must learn. Hubbard's "Study Tech" creates robots.
• Doing "clay demos" and using "demo kits" is an artificial construct that is, except in a few instances, just silly. Students just end up "fiddling" with paperclips. In learning to use a chain saw, one should have a chain saw, not clay demo a chain saw. Hubbard's "Study Tech" adds strange, unnecessary complications to study.

My contention is that Hubbard's "Study Tech" isn't a benign version of "standard teaching techniques", it is actually harmful and destroys good student habits.

Thank you for your clarification and going more in-depth as to what study tech looks like! That is clearly much, much worse.
I'm sure folx are coming up with ways to limit Scientology's access to public schools...