Study Technology

Touretzky’s anti-Scientology activities include attacking L. Ron Hubbard’s Study Technology.

Applied Scholastics is a non-profit organization founded in 1972 to make the benefits and breakthroughs of L. Ron Hubbard’s educational methods available to students and teachers worldwide. Since that time Applied Scholastics has grown into a very successful program with 415 Applied Scholastics centers in 54 countries. Professionals trained in L. Ron Hubbard’s Study Technology have delivered seminars and training courses to over 63,000 teachers in Europe, Asia, South America, Africa and the U.S. These teachers, in turn, have delivered the study technology to more than 3 million students. Due to this technology’s phenomenal success rate at improving literacy, Applied Scholastics enjoys the support of educators around the world.

Although Touretzky has never studied the methodology, nor applied it, he took it upon himself to write an essay on the subject and, using his Carnegie Mellon credentials, present himself as some sort of “expert” on the subject for the media. Touretzky is not an expert in the field of study technology or education; his own site shows that he is a research scientist whose work is limited to the study and understanding of the behavior of rodents.

While he concedes that each of the key elements of Study Technology has workability, he cannot override his own hatred and prejudices against anything having to do with Scientology to make an objective review of the subject.

Touretzky’s essay on Study Technology is filled with denigrating remarks about Scientology religious doctrine in which he takes altered portions of Scientology religious works and holds them up to ridicule. His main focus is that Study Technology is used within the Scientology religion. Of course it is. It was developed originally to help students of Scientology. It provides a method by which a student can grasp any subject, whether that subject is Scientology or any other. Because its applicability is so broad, it has been used by educators in a secular context since the establishment of Applied Scholastics in 1974.

As to his specific criticisms about the technology itself, Touretzky is not an expert in this Study Technology, and admittedly his only sources of information on the subject are former Scientologists. As he has never studied the methodology, nor applied it, he is clearly unqualified to pass judgment on it.