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St. Louis school system rejects Scientology's Applied Scholastics program
Added: (Sun Sep 25 2005)
The St. Louis Post Dispatch reported on September 22 that the district's superintendent of education has decided that teachers will no longer participate in training programs offered by Applied Scholastics International, a front group of the Church of Scientology. Teachers who had attended these programs were uncomfortable with what they saw there, and complained to their union. School Board member Bill Purdy called for an investigation of the program last week, and after visiting the center, expressed his own concerns about all the materials being labeled 'based on the works of L. Ron Hubbard.'
Mr. Purdy was right to be concerned. What Applied Scholastics promotes as
secular "study technology" is actually covert instruction in the Scientology religion. The practices of "word clearing" and "clay table demos" come directly from the Technical Bulletins of Dianetics and Scientology, volumes found in every Scientology church. ASI's supposedly secular textbooks teach three versions of word clearing: methods 3, 9, and 7. What they doh't disclose is that methods 1, 2, 4, and 5 involve use of the E-meter, a crude lie detector device that Scientology insists be used only for spiritual counseling by trained Scientology ministers, called "auditors".
Education experts such as Johanna Lemlech at USC, Sidnie Myrick at
UCLA, MaryEllen Vogt at Cal State Long Beach, and Victoria Purcell-Gates at Harvard (now at Michigan State) have dismissed study technology as educationally unsound and potentially harmful.
Applied Scholastics' parent organization, the Association for Better Living and Education (ABLE), is run by members of Scientology's paramilitary Sea
Organization. Sea Org members sign billion year contracts promising to serve the church over countless reincarnations. ABLE's regional offices in cities like New York and Clearwater are in Church of Scientology buildings. Furthermore, ABLE and Applied Scholastics are listed as "Scientology-affiliated entities" in the Church of Scientology's filings with the US Internal Revenue Service.
More information about study technology and Applied Scholastics International is available at http://StudyTech.org. The St. Louis school board would do well to visit that web site if ASI presses for reconsideration of their decision. Scientology's "study technology" has no place in the public schools.
Submitted by:
StudyTech.org