Thinking about Scientology's "Study Tech"

According to Lawrence Wright, in a New Yorker profile (Feb. 14 & 21, 2011, pp. 95-96) of Paul Haggis, “The Apostate: A former Scientologist speaks out,” and corroborated on a Scientology FAQ, education in schools established by Scientologists is based on three principles, together known as “study technology” or “study tech.” According to the Scientologists, “the impediment to students’ ability to retain and effectively use data [prior to L. Ron Hubbard’s discovery of ‘study tech’] was the absence of a technology of how to study.” Study tech rests on three principles: the use of clay or other materials to model concepts that are otherwise abstract or difficult to understand; the use of dictionaries and other sources to clarify precise word meanings; and the teaching of a topic as completely as possible to avoid “too steep a gradient” in learning.

These principles sound innocuous, but I believe reflection yields some reservations.

In the article, Haggis’s daughter is cited regarding the helpful use of clay to model an atom. But this takes a complex, easily misunderstood and still not completely understood phenomenon—an atom—and renders it in crude material terms. Clay cannot hold an electrical charge, or act like a wave and a particle simultaneously, or evince entanglement, or demonstrate statistical probabilities or quantum states. Most of what’s important or interesting about atoms is necessarily left out, glossed over, or caricatured. Like those annoying silver balls and hoops on the credits for the amusing TV show, The Big Bang Theory, the clay is just sort of “there,” reinforcing our lack of understanding of the matter of the universe, or, more worrying, reinforcing a false materialism.

Similarly, dictionaries, while helpful, offer only a low-level consensus on conventional meanings with, at best, a historical look at word origins and usages. Definition is among the lowest order of understanding and interpretation, often necessary but rarely enough. Taken to an extreme, a dictionary or definition-based approach to learning yields knowledge as a sort of butterfly collection, each specimen pinned and identified. Something is missing here: life.

The concept of “too steep a gradient” seems the least objectionable; Vygotsky’s concept of a “zone of proximal development” may apply here, the idea that we start from where we are and then, with the guidance of teachers or of experience, move beyond our current state at a rate that is not so slow that it causes boredom and not so rapid that it causes confusion. There is probably “too steep a gradient” for each of us. On the other hand, we are only capable of learning “completely” within the limits of our developmental stage. How much science can, say, a 3rd grader learn completely? Clearly, very little, and with very little understanding of the actual creative work of a scientist. Effective learning clearly builds on what comes before, but, also, on anticipation of what is still unknown.