6409C22 SHSpec-40 A Review of Study

There are no textbooks on how to study, even in schools of education.
LRH plans to write one that would revolutionize the field of study and
education. In Johannesburg, tests on school children showed a decrease in
I.Q. that was more marked, the longer they stayed in school. The longer a
person studies, of course, the more words he runs into that he doesn't
understand and the more confusion he piles up.

Artists, writers, etc., in the work-a-day world have this peculiarity:
The successful ones have never taken a course in their art field or even
finished college. At a party given in New York for professional writers, LRH
did an informal survey to determine the educational background of the guests.
He found that most of them had either been expelled from college or had never
attended college in the first place. The one exception was a man who piped up
and said that he had obtained a PhD in literature. He turned out to be a
literary agent, a failed writer. In the years following, LRH found out that
writing courses don't teach writing. They teach some technology that writers
don't use and various gimmicks that writers also don't use. Writers do have
and use a technology, but writing courses don't teach it. The trouble is that
writers are professional liars. When then tell you how they write, they tell
the most incredible tales: They never really say what they do. So there are
a lot of pretended technologies in the area.

In any technical subject, technology builds up in the area of
correction. Such technologies as photographic retouching or correction lists
tend to be more complex than the technologies that they correct. If you have
the technique of how to do it in the first place, everything will move
smoothly from there on. But if technology is missing, not known, or not
practiced, we will now get a complicated technology arising as a lower-scale
subject that will be corrective of the upper-scale subject. Medicine is
another example of a corrective technology. The upper-scale technology would
be that of making bodies properly in the first place.

As practiced today all education is a corrective technology. It is
trying to correct its own failed corrections. There is duress in the field to
get students to learn. This must be an effort to correct the students'
failure to get the material in the first place, caused by early confusions.
Duress, in education, is a substitute for the missing technology of the
misunderstood word and the cause of the failure of education. The duress
makes it impossible for the student to use his education. He is left on a
suppress and an only-one basis, because the duress has caused him to go out of
ARC with the subject, so he does a non-application of the information. He
might even get weird and revengeful towards his subject. Schools keep kids in
line until they are old enough for the police to take over the job.

"Freedom from" is fighting something or worrying about it, not true
freedom.

[One way in which you can have a misunderstood is by getting what the
writer is saying but, having misunderstood or missed something (perhaps
earlier), not getting what the writer is driving at.]

How does the state suffer from mis-education? In Russia, many students
were given on-the-job training for key posts. But after their training, 100%
of the students left the posts that they were trained for. What must have
happened is that, 'way back in school, the communist love of changing the
meanings of words got in there. The English upper, governing class lost their
influence by being educated to death.

So the continuation of a culture depends on having a technology of
study. The government is trying to bring in law and order, while creating
disorder, delinquency, and stupidity in the schools. Once again, scientology
and dianetics collide with an area where there is a pretended technology.
Unlike the area of medicine and drugs, the field of education is not one of
vested interest, because there is not as much money in it.

When you are teaching teachers about study technology, you should
recognize that you are moving them up from Level 0 to Level I. [See pp.
521-523, above for a description of Level 0; p. 479, above, for a description
of Levels I and II; and p. 462, above, for a summary of Levels and Classes
I-IV.] You can tell the teachers, "The I.Q. of your children could be
increased by study, instead of decreased," or "Your school could run with less
upset," or "Juvenile delinquency is caused by mis-education." This will be
very acceptable to them, and they will never think to ask where this data and
knowledge is coming from, because they never think about anything in the first
place. You haven't realized that they can't see where it is coming from,
because they can't see at all! This is because they have been trained into
stupidity.

When you fail to communicate to someone about scientology, it is because
you are talking to them above the level at which you should be talking to
them. You've got to give them the idea that there are data, that data can be
comprehended, and that they can learn something. Then you can give them the
idea that there is knowledge. People don't expect anything to work, because
nothing ever has. They don't think that there is anything to know. If we are
unreal to them, it is because everything is unreal to them. We have a high
command-value over them. Scientology could probably put the whole society
into some kind of obedience basis, but that is not our purpose.

You would have a win if you approached someone on the following
gradient:

1. Getting him into a state where he could learn.

2. Showing him that there was something to be studied.

3. Showing him that there was a body of information about study.

4. Showing him that there was a body of information to study.

This hasn't been our normal approach. We have generally overlooked the fact
that if someone can't learn, he can't even receive your message. In fact, his
basic PTP's have to do with not knowing. If he knew that there was some way
to learn about anything, he would be very interested. If he could know that
there was some way to gather data, he would be on your side, because he could
apply this to his PTP's. You would teach him that the first step to knowing
about something is to observe it. Both you and he have probably taken it for
granted that he is already doing that, when he isn't. You could ask him
something like, "Have you ever taken a really good look at what your wife is
doing?", or some such.

When you are teaching someone about study, you take the obvious and
expand it, as an introduction to the field. In dissemination, you are not up
against society's ignorance, cussedness, or unwillingness to be helped, but
against incorrect study tech and charge on study. This jams your comm line.
Incorrect study tech prohibits people from learning that there is more to
know, thus stultifying the intellect, creating stupidity, and discouraging
observation. Therefore study is an excellent dissemination tool. When
disseminating, stay simple. Concentrate on something like, "One learns
through observation, which is accomplished by observing." Tell them about the
value of observing, gaining familiarity, etc. Don't start with the ARC
triangle: The person that you are disseminating to doesn't know that
knowledge hasn't already all been found out. He has to come to realize that
he can learn and that there is more to know. Since he first tried to learn
something, he has been subjected to a technology that stultifies the
intellect. He has weird ideas about study that make him flinch from the idea
of learning things. You have to make him reach by giving him the obvious,
which he can see. Take the obvious points and get studious about them. You
can get away with being studious about what is obvious. A person isn't going
to get anywhere except by observation, anyway. Let him get complex about the
subject of observation. He will only wind up back at observing. He will get
to the fact that you observe by observing, after he blows through the
complexity. By reach and withdraw of observation, he gets more familiar, e.g.
with his wife.

Thus, study can bring him out of it.