Article by L. Ron Hubbard

It is not necessary to read one book by a whole class at once. That cuts down the zest. A child can give an oral book report if he is asked, “Did you like that story, Johnny?” “You bet. Gee whiz. That guy sure could fight!”

There are boys’ magazines and girls’ magazines designed for boys and girls which are enough to start a child upon a career of reading. The cinema has its points, but they are all lazy points in that they do not stimulate the mind to visualize. The movie hands it all out and leaves nothing to be rationalized.

And if we are to have bright children, we must teach them to think. Everybody has said that, but nobody had any real answer.

Many times men have said, “He never learned how to study,” regarding some poor, bewildered fellow who did not have a memory mind—had really learned how to study.

“As long as children and young men and women find pleasure in study, they will continue studying throughout life—and upon that depends their happiness.”
—L. Ron Hubbard

As long as children and young men and women find pleasure in study, they will continue studying throughout life—and upon that depends their happiness.

The ability to associate facts for the formation of a solution depends upon the facts possessed and upon nothing else. There is no knucklebone and tom-tom beating here. The human mind is clearly a tabulator and no man in an office is foolish enough to think that his adding machine will total his month’s books until he has fed that machine the figures in the books. This is the unswerving law and is known well.

How then, may I ask, is it possible for anyone to solve anything until he at least has some small knowledge of it? How then is it that a trained thinker can take a few odds and ends of anything and arrive at a whole when men who have slaved in the field all their lives have not glimpsed truth? Such is the case of a young makeup artist, turned down by all the chemists in the country, who finally studied a few weeks and made his own plastic.

Everyone is baffled by this strange manifestation. But it is not strange and if we would let the children of man lead happier lives, then we must teach them in such a way that any normal problem can be readily solved by them. To do this we must have facts. Real facts which will stay with the child.

“To open the top of a cranium and into it empty forty books, to give the owner a diploma and a title, is not education but butchery.”
—L. Ron Hubbard

To open the top of a cranium and into it empty forty books, to give the owner a diploma and a title, is not education but butchery.

We have libraries and need no animated file cabinets.

The boy and girl graduating at the top of the class usually, it is true, find some splendid position, but usually as walking file cabinets. This is not fair to them. True, their diplomas and rating did much to elevate them to high position because “society” appreciated such things. But the unhappy father is he who has a boy who suddenly grows tired and lackluster beneath the bombardment of facts, the shame of failure and the contempt of elders. To this is generally added parental shame and even ire. Was there ever such madness?

At times a boy or girl with great reasoning power, and without great worry, rockets to the top of the class and holds honors and athletic achievement without seeming to be much concerned. Their lot is much better, but these are the real geniuses of the world and an educational system has prevented them from becoming the “successes” they might have been.

We face unemployment and many of the lesser tasks are being filled by men and women who were trained for better positions. The girl that majored in interior decoration can be found in a department store earning a ridiculous sum in contrast to what her education cost. The engineer turns surveyor because road-construction jobs are done by the nephews of the commissioners. The trained biologist finds himself, at forty, selling shoes.

This is not because they are less brilliant, but because there is an overstocking of the world in diplomas. In fact the men and women who have to take such positions are, like as not, the best equipped for the higher positions. It is a recommendation to graduate in the middle of the class—but not to the world of business. However, such things will very shortly be changed.

Any of these people make good educators, particularly when they have fought the world to their own great astonishment. If such people were to be placed in educating positions in their own line, the present overworked teaching staffs could have some small chance to live a calmer life without suffering financially or in reputation as, when the army expands, the sergeants always become captains.