6408C06 SHSpec-34 Study -- Gradients and Nomenclature

Bulletins are now being written in a form that is easier to understand,
since LRH started to study study. Scores on exams have gone from 5% in the
go's to 60% in the 90's, since this material started to be communicated. The
aim is to improve the ability of the student to learn by altering the
methodology of teaching. This is an unusual approach. We are now handling
the student's subjective reaction to the subject by changing the method of
teaching. The usual way to change the student's reaction to the subject was
by punishment, the normal physical universe method. The grade system is a
punishment system. On rare occasions, the participation of the student has
been invited by some teachers.

Education is not normally very successful, although educators don't often
recognize or admit this fact. In scientology, we have the unusual situation
of being able to see the end product of our education in action. This makes
it easy to see how well the students learned the material. In studying study,
LRH avoided fields where the student's ability to apply what he learned is
readily observable. We have instantaneous inspection of the results of our
study. This is quite rare.

Most fields of study expect the student to be very amateurish. In the
field of photography, you get results almost as rapidly as in studying
auditing, which made it a good comparative field for studying.

Auditing is a complicated activity. In teaching it, we apply the
principle of gradient scales, which was discovered long since. We have
someone learn a fairly simple basic action very well. Then we add a second
action, etc. Modern universities usually err by entering the gradient at too
high a point and assuming that the students already know basics that they
don't, in fact. Modern education is the art of teaching on an out-gradient.

Our basic gradient on education is to start by getting someone there.
This is a step that elementary school teachers overlook and that works very
well when used for five or ten minutes a day, brief a time though that is, at
the start of the day. For instance, you could run, "Look at that wall," etc.
The fact that a body is there doesn't prove that the person is there. Nobody
is smart where he is not, so getting the person there raises I.Q.

You always have to start with an action that is simple enough so that the
student can get it rather easily. Otherwise, he will feel spinny and confused
as he goes on. You could discover whether this had happened with a person by
checking on the E-meter for early difficulties in studying dianetics or
scientology. If you got TA and continued reads as the person discussed it,
you would know that there was something there that bad never been resolved.

The difficulties that men have with their minds are those which have
ridden forward with them into the present. Those are the ones that must be
handled. You can always get one read on a difficulty or confusion that
someone has had in the past, simply because it is pictured on the track as
having been a difficulty. But it won't keep reading, if it hasn't ridden
forward in time. As an auditor, you are only interested in the things that
the person never resolved, which are active now. Those things will read
repetitively. This applies to clearing up someone's difficulty in studying,
because the confusions that the person had which are now cleared up have no
power to confuse him now. ARC must have preceded all misemotion and bad
reaction. The confusion that sticks the student in PT is never his basic
confusion. If a student really can't learn something, then there is a lower
point on the gradient that the student skipped. At that point, he had enough
confusion to be overwhelmed. That second point is the one that you will get
on the meter. You won't get the earliest point. This follows the pattern of
the mind. A person doesn't have trouble from what he knows is wrong. What
the student is very confused about, which the instructor can't seem to teach,
is not the right point to try to clear up. The way to handle this student is
to go back and find the word in the earlier material that wasn't understood.
You can pinpoint within a few words the exact spot at which a student started
to have trouble, then look earlier and find the skipped gradient. If there is
some word that a student doesn't understand, with violence, you look before
that. You go back as far as you need to.

The physiological manifestations will be feeling headachy, spots in front
of the eyes, walls getting closer, a spinny, weird feeling. The skipped
gradient can even be in an allied subject. When a word is misunderstood,
words right after it vanish.

Teaching is relaying data to a person that he can receive and understand,
in such a way that he will be able to use the data. That is the definition
that was given the other day (See p. 656, above), to fit in with this exact
rationale that we are discussing now. Instruction would consist of guiding a
student along a known gradient, not dreaming up solutions to his confusions.
Good instruction consists in backtracking to find the point where the student
thought he understood, when he didn't. "Study is a concatenation of
certainties, ... a string of confidences and competences." So before you help
a student out, let him get in trouble. "Never trouble trouble 'til trouble
troubles you." That is the difficulty of group study. Teachers have to make
an average of trouble for the whole class. Don't ever help a student before
be runs into trouble.

It is interesting that it was in 1947 that LRH started investigating the
effect of a mis-learned word on life, following the data from Commander
Thompson on word-associations. LRH established that when he cleared up some
words, what had been troubling a person ceased to trouble him, though he could
well have new problems.

Another aspect of the misunderstood word phenomenon can be that the word
or phrase used can be inadequate, leading to omitted data. One can get hung
up by being deprived of some information, e.g. by a typographical error. So
it could be omitted data as well as misunderstood words [that causes trouble
for the student]. The fault could be in the text. The common ingredient is
that something is not understood.