He stressed two significant points: first, he wished his students to appreciate the scope of the world beyond their shores; and second, he wanted them to understand how literacy held the key to participation in that world.

To convey the foreign concept of a railroad train to children, who had no experience of mechanical transportation, he hitched three or four ox carts together. The theory underlying this successful experiment would prove vital to his later work. He had hit right at the heart of the learning process, how information is best assimilated-and what accounts for the bored and exasperated student.

In 1938, Mr. Hubbard outlined fundamental principles of education, from his views on the degrading examination system to practical procedures to be followed in teaching a foreign language.

During the Second World War, he became involved in the direct instruction of military personnel as well as the redrafting of instructional materials. In a preliminary note on his navigational text, he advised, "Failure to learn definitions results in a later inability to understand explanations, which include those definitions. Easily the most important factor in any study is a comprehension of what is meant by certain words."

In 1950, he lectured further on effective approaches to education, clarifying the goal and purpose of education as well as basic axioms for the subject. “The maintenance of a high level of self-determinism is more important in educating than the maintenance of order,” he stated. This prescient observation predated modern education reform efforts, and the emerging emphasis on teaching students to reason with the concepts they are taught, by more than four decades.

In fact, by the early 1960’s, Mr. Hubbard saw fully that declining educational standards were having a profound effect on the learning abilities of the people he was attempting to instruct. His investigation of this decline, and research regarding the basic laws of education led to a revolutionary development in the field – a technology of study. His lectures on this work were recorded and formed the basis for a whole approach to teaching and learning.
As educators throughout the world learned of Mr. Hubbard’s breakthroughs, they began to utilize them in their own work. Thus were formed the roots of a new world wide movement – Applied Scholastics.