The problems facing schools are too great to ignore the methods of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

By RENA WEINBERG

Rena Weinberg Is President of the Assn. for Better Living and Education (Able), an Organization Formed to Coordinate the Use of L. Ron Hubbard’s Social Betterment Methods in Society

The proposal by a teacher to open a charter school in the Sunland-Tujunga area, one which will include among its textbooks some written by L. Ron Hubbard, has become something of a controversy–which is a pity, because the real issue is so much more important.

Whether a controversy actually existed before a couple of Times columnists made their prejudices known is debatable. Certainly, they didn’t help. The latest came from Scott Harris, who had what he obviously thought was fun writing a column he termed a “parody,” one which included grossly altered information about Scientology. To Scientologists Harris’ idea of fun was nothing but bigotry.

Still, Scientologists are used to being misunderstood by the media and they aren’t the real casualties in this tempest in a teapot.

Only one valid question has been raised: Because L. Ron Hubbard is also founder of the religion of Scientology, do these books propagate the religion and thus violate separation of church and state?

Not according to the state Department of Education office that oversees approval of supplemental textbooks. A 20-member citizens committee reviewed the works and, according to a department spokesperson, “They don’t say anything about Scientology.” Which is why the state has approved statewide use of these textbooks.

So much for that.

Let’s get to the only important issue. Somewhere between 25% and 50% of all Americans, depending upon which study you read, are functionally illiterate. Either of those figures and anything in between is too high.

The fact is: Although you may be reading this, many, many Americans cannot.

There is no shortage of other statistics to signal that we have a crisis on our hands. While SAT scores are “recentered” to account for lowered standards, and each small upward tick is applauded, the fact is that since the 1960s they have plummeted. And when one considers the proven link between illiteracy and criminality, the cost to society is enormous.

The focus in Los Angeles is currently on the shortage of textbooks in our schools. Although this is lamentable and must be corrected, it is not the basic issue. What use are textbooks to kids who can’t read?

It is this situation that Hubbard’s methods remedy. And while educators argue over the efficacy of the “phonics” or “whole language” methods of instruction, and politicians talk about smaller classrooms and “privatization,” Hubbard undercuts all this to provide a workable method to learn how to learn, the value of which has been demonstrated in school after school in many countries since the 1960s and validated in numerous studies.

How do you absorb material so that you understand it? How do you understand it well enough so that you can actually apply it? These are the questions that his methods resolve. And their application on a widespread scale could signal a renaissance in education that will turn this dismal tide.

* * *

Why did nobody talk about this–the real issue? Were they more interested in controversy than education?

It is somewhat amusing to see that the media, which for years debated the question of whether Scientology was a religion or not, is now carping about Hubbard’s secular works, claiming “they must be religious.”

To be fair, L. Ron Hubbard was a remarkable man whose contributions cover many fields. Perhaps this is something that defies the descriptive powers of some journalists. A man who lived a life of extraordinary depth, he was known initially to the public as a fiction author, but he was also a humanitarian who researched various means to help mankind. And, in doing this, he not only developed methods that address our gravest social problems, but also founded the Scientology religion. For a founder of a 20th century religion not to do this, in view of societal decay, would have been a grave omission, he felt. He was also perfectly aware that the solutions he proposed needed to be secular in nature so that they would be available to help everyone.

L. Ron Hubbard’s motive always was to elevate the culture. And he was nothing if not prescient. In 1950 he wrote, “Today’s children will become tomorrow’s civilization. The end and goal of any society as it addresses the problem of education is to raise the ability, the initiative and cultural level and with all of that the survival level, of that society, and when a society forgets any one of these things it is destroying itself by its own education mediums.”

That we as a society did forget is painfully apparent as we look at the problem we face today. Fortunately, Hubbard did not forget and spent much of his life developing methods to effectively reverse the decline.

We would be fools not to take advantage of them.

© Copyright Los Angeles Times

Education: Head of inner-city campaign praises methods. Applied Scholastics officials deny that the program is an attempt to recruit members.

By DUKE HELFAND, L.A. Times Staff Writer

Applied Scholastics International, the Hollywood organization that promotes the teaching methods of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, is spreading its ideas and school textbooks through inner-city communities in a partnership with a Baptist minister from Compton.

The company has teamed up with the Rev. Alfreddie Johnson in a grass-roots campaign to bring Hubbard’s “Study Technology” to church and community tutoring programs in low-income areas.

The Hubbard methods and their relationship to Scientology have come under scrutiny in recent weeks because of a proposed charter school in the Los Angeles Unified School District that would rely on the techniques.

The proposal has called into question whether the Applied Scholastics texts–which are nearing approval from the state Department of Education for use in public schools–violate the constitutional separation of church and state.

* * *

Critics of the 5-year-old campaign to build links with the inner city call it a veiled attempt to recruit members to Scientology, the controversial religion Hubbard founded in the early 1950s that has been variously criticized as a for-profit business and a cult.

Former Scientologists say one goal of the church’s “social betterment” programs, such as Applied Scholastics, is to build broad acceptance for the religion and Hubbard.

Johnson runs the World Literacy Crusade, which has more than 35 chapters from South Los Angeles to South Africa that he says have been established to promote the educational program.

Johnson, who works out of his storefront church and community center, says he is not troubled by suggestions that Applied Scholastics has greater ambitions than education.

“I’m only interested in the product, and Applied Scholastics produces responsible human beings with the ability to learn and communicate in any subject,” said Johnson, who keeps copies of the Hubbard texts on bookshelves in his True Faith Christian Center.

Applied Scholastics and Johnson observe a simple philosophy: Illiteracy is at the root of social ills, from crime and drug use to poverty itself.

* * *

Applied Scholastics, which charges Johnson and the other groups from Pacoima to Miami a licensing fee to use its methods, actively promotes the crusade. It supplies volunteers to train local activists in the Hubbard techniques and has featured Johnson in one of its glossy annual reports.

Another Scientology organization that promotes Applied Scholastics, the Assn. for Better Living and Education, devoted a recent issue of its magazine, “Solutions,” to Johnson’s crusade, complete with testimonials from young students.

Advocates of the Hubbard techniques say they help students by removing three “barriers” to learning. Students use dictionaries to look up words they do not understand, so they fully grasp reading material; they apply their lessons to real life; and they master each rung of a lesson to obtain a thorough understanding of a subject.

The colorful books that make up the Applied Scholastics series prominently feature Hubbard’s name on the front and a short biography in the back that makes no mention of him as Scientology’s founder.

* * *

“These are front groups,” said Robert Vaughn Young, a former national Scientology spokesman who left the church in 1989. “They are set up to get Scientology into areas where it could never go as a religion.”

Church spokeswoman Gail Armstrong called Young’s assertions a “mischaracterization.” She said the church publicly reaches out for new members with its own programs.

“This claim that we are seeking to get new recruits through these programs is completely disingenuous,” she said.

Applied Scholastics officials say the World Literacy Crusade is merely one of many educational endeavors they promote, and say the Hubbard books contain no references to any religion.

They complain that they are being singled out for criticism while organizations affiliated with other churches earn praise for working in needy communities.

“The purpose of Applied Scholastics is to help students of all ages to improve their studies. If someone can find some hidden agenda, I have not heard of it,” said Rena Weinberg, a spokeswoman. “I have never been asked to take some kid who is a gang member and bring him into Scientology.”

* * *

Religious scholars have mixed opinions about the inner-city campaign, seeing both altruism and opportunism.

J. Gordon Melton, author of the Encyclopedia of American Religion, has reviewed the Hubbard textbooks and calls them “purely secular.” Melton said he has collected about 200 works of Scientology.

“For those who run Applied Scholastics, I think it’s a perfectly honest attempt to help people,” said Melton, who is a research specialist in the religious studies department at UC Santa Barbara. “I think among the higher-ups in the Church of Scientology, those at a strategic level, they see this as a way of indirectly spreading Scientology by building the reputation of their leader.”

Church spokeswoman Armstrong said that Scientologists proudly take part in Applied Scholastics campaigns and that any resulting community goodwill is a “natural byproduct,” not a goal, of the programs.

Clearly, Applied Scholastics has managed to generate goodwill with Johnson and his followers.

Johnson says that Applied Scholastics has never pressed anyone at his church to study Scientology, and that none of the 700 people who have used the techniques follow the religion.

* * *

Johnson acknowledges that the “nonreligious” methods may engender skepticism from outsiders, but he sees them as a means to improve lives.

“The power to become a fireman or a doctor or a scientist is bound up in concepts, which are bound up in words,” he said.

Johnson co-founded the Compton Literacy Project with another minister, Frederick Shaw Jr., shortly after the Los Angeles riots in 1992. Johnson learned about the Hubbard methods at an Applied Scholastics meeting at Shaw’s home. Shaw is the son of Compton City Councilwoman Marcine Shaw, whose late husband was a Scientologist.

At the time, Johnson was running a community program in Compton offering young men counseling and other services. He recalled hearing about the idea of clearing up midsunderstood words–one key to the Hubbard methods–and being immediately impressed by its potential for teaching literacy.

“The light went off,” said Johnson, who subsequently moved the headquarters of his community center to Lynwood. “It’s what I was looking for. This was what I needed for my boys.”

Shaw has even taken a handful of classes given by Scientologists.

“I love Scientologists,” he said. “They are wonderful people.”

Johnson says he employs other literacy tools, such as a phonics program.

Students of the Hubbard methods at the center say it has transformed their lives.

* * *

Ronnie Brown, who spent 13 years in various jails for drug-related offenses and at one point lost custody of his three young children, says the “study tech” helped him improve his reading level and taught him how to focus on his work.

“A lot of times we give up on learning, thinking there’s something wrong with us, that we’re dumb or we can’t get it,” said Brown, 40. “After completing this course, I understand that there are certain barriers to learning.”

Now Brown is working at the center and says he has regained custody of his three children. Making progress on his scholastics also has brought realizations about his personal life.

“The tech gave me the ability to understand why I used drugs,” he said. “It was because of my ignorance and the pain and hurt within me.”

Such stories of success have won Johnson’s World Literacy Crusade recognition from local officials in Compton, where the City Council earlier this year declared Jan. 18 “World Literacy Crusade Day” in honor of the organization’s five-year anniversary.

* * *

Compton Councilwoman Shaw says the methods can break the cycle of violence in her community.

“The only way to do it is to make a person literate so they can become self-sustaining,” said Shaw, who is a Baptist. The Rev. Joseph Peay, who began using the Hubbard methods earlier this month at his Praise Sanctuary in the Crenshaw district, shares the enthusiasm.

Peay says that he was initially reluctant to embrace the methods because of the link to Hubbard, but that fellow ministers encouraged him to try the techniques, thinking they might provide a new and valuable educational tool. He reviewed the materials and says he found nothing religious in them. An Applied Scholastics volunteer came to the church in recent months and trained six of his parishioners, who in turn are now tutoring about 12 students.

Peay says that one of his tutors’ children, a 5-year-old boy, came to his office recently to show how he could read the Bible–in part because of listening to the Applied Scholastics training. Peay had the boy read the same passages aloud to his congregation at a subsequent Sunday church service.

* * *

The minister and members of his parish plan to walk door-to-door in their neighborhood next week to attract more students.

“There is no doubt in my mind that this particular course of instruction can remedy the educational deficiencies in South-Central Los Angeles,” Peay said.

Peay says there is an added benefit to the instruction: It is helping his congregants gain a deeper appreciation of their own religion.

“This program has made me realize that when the Gospel is being preached, people don’t understand because they don’t understand the words,” he said. “And if they don’t understand, how can they be saved?”

Education: Materials inspired by controversial Scientology founder are expected to go on list for optional use by schools. Officials say they don’t violate content guidelines.

By DUKE HELFAND, L.A. Times Staff Writer

The state education department has given preliminary approval to statewide use of school textbooks inspired by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard that already are at the center of a controversy in Los Angeles schools.

Five books based on Hubbard’s education ideas are expected to be placed on a list of supplementary texts that schools across the state can purchase–possibly as soon as September, an education official said Monday.

“There’s no religion mentioned in those books,” said Anna Emery of the state Department of Education office that oversees the approval of supplemental textbooks. “They don’t say anything about Scientology.”

The action makes the books eligible, but not mandatory, for purchase and use by local school districts.

Under state education guidelines, schools can spend 30% of their textbook budgets on such supplemental materials when the texts meet minimum content requirements that govern such things as the depiction of ethnic groups and references to religion.

A 20-member citizens committee–one of many across the state selected by state and county education officials–reviewed the Hubbard works and approved them for the list after requiring a series of revisions, said Emery, an analyst with the curriculum, frameworks and instructional resources office at the state Department of Education.

Emery said some members of the panel expressed concerns about the use of the books because of the link to Hubbard, the controversial religious leader whose name is featured prominently on the front of the books.

The books, which teach a learning method known as Applied Scholastics, are published by Bridge Publications, which also produces literature for the Church of Scientology. But the panelists could find no legal reason to deny the works a place on the list on the basis of religion, Emery said.

“They were not real thrilled about it,” Emery said. “The name L. Ron Hubbard made them not want to approve it. But they had no choice.”

The proposed use of Hubbard-inspired texts has drawn attention because of the religious nature of Scientology, which has been variously criticized as a cult and a profit-driven enterprise since Hubbard began it in the early 1950s. Critics, including former Scientologists, contend that the works are simply an extension of Hubbard’s religious teachings.

But the citizens panel weighed 13 criteria drawn from the state education code in evaluating the texts, including one that bars texts from encouraging religious beliefs.

The panel, Emery said, could find no violation of the guideline on religion. Instead, the panel required Bridge to make changes in the ways the texts portrayed men and women and the disabled, and to add more ethnic minorities to the text or illustrations.

Los Angeles Unified School District officials expressed concern when they were told of the state’s action. The Hubbard-inspired texts have been the subject of controversy because of a proposal by a teacher who is a Scientologist to open a charter school in the Sunland-Tujunga area that would feature the Applied Scholastics works. A few other district teachers say they have been using the Hubbard-based texts and methods in their classrooms for years.

During a closed-door meeting to discuss possible church-state conflicts raised by the charter school proposal, the Los Angeles Board of Education decided Monday to seek an outside legal opinion from a constitutional law expert.

“The plot thickens,” said school board President Julie Korenstein. “We’ll have to let our attorneys know about this. We somewhat take our orders from the state Department of Education. When they have an approved list, we go to that approved list. This is all brand new information. It’s a total surprise.”

Administrators at Applied Scholastics, a private company in Hollywood that promotes the Hubbard teaching methods, applauded the state’s decision.

“I think this is fabulous news,” said Rena Weinberg, an Applied Scholastics spokeswoman. “I think it is very fitting because these sound educational principles are being recognized as they should, considering they have been in use so many years.”

Advocates say the Hubbard methods help students improve by removing three fundamental barriers to learning: students use dictionaries to look up words they do not understand in a process known as “word clearing,” they apply their lessons to real life and they master each rung of material to obtain a thorough understanding of a subject.

Critics, including former Scientologists, contend that the learning methods are a means of drawing new adherents into Scientology. The critics note, for example, the similarity between the “word clearing” principle taught in Applied Scholastics and the process of “clearing” away negative past experiences through Scientology courses.

Bridge Publications submitted the Applied Scholastics texts to the state in May 1996. The texts were reviewed by the citizens panel, and Bridge was notified of the need for three sets of changes:

Women, who had originally been depicted in passive roles, had to be shown in more dominant ways; for example, the revised versions had one woman riding a tractor.

Bridge also was required to add more ethnic groups, which it did by including more illustrations of minorities.

The publisher also was required to include disabled people in the books, which it did by showing them in wheelchairs, Emery said.

The panel approved Bridge’s revisions Wednesday. The books could be included in the September version of a catalog the state distributes to school districts three times a year announcing books on the supplemental list.

© Copyright Los Angeles Times

As controversy flares over Scientology adherent’s proposal to found a charter school in L.A., other district teachers step forward to tell their stories of educational success using … (Hubbard Teachings in Public Classrooms)

By DUKE HELFAND, L.A. Times Staff Writer

As the Los Angeles Board of Education grapples with whether to approve a new charter school that would feature the teaching methods of L. Ron Hubbard, the late founder of the Church of Scientology, a handful of district teachers say they have been using those techniques for years and keep copies of Hubbard’s works in their classrooms.

The controversy over the use of Hubbard’s methods–known as Applied Scholastics–has prompted district officials to undertake a review of policies on religion in public schools and to seek an opinion from the state Department of Education on the legality of using the materials.

The school board, meanwhile, plans to meet in closed session Monday to get advice from district lawyers on its obligation to keep religion out of classrooms.

The Los Angeles district special education teacher who wants to lead the new school in the East San Fernando Valley, Linda Smith, maintains that the Hubbard materials are nonsectarian learning techniques appropriate for students of any faith.

But board members, citing Smith’s acknowledged membership in the Church of Scientology, said they are concerned about religious links.

“I think we need to get more information on what this educational philosophy is [so that] we feel comfortable that it doesn’t have religious overtones,” said board President Julie Korenstein, who has asked district staff to review Applied Scholastics.

As a charter school, Smith’s campus would be allowed to operate outside many state and district rules that constrain curriculum and budgets. Her proposed use of Hubbard texts has drawn attention because of Scientology’s legal status as a religion and the fact that it has been variously criticized as a cult and as a profit-driven enterprise since Hubbard started it in the early 1950s.

Under district policy, any religion, including traditions and observances, may be taught as an academic subject, but instructors are prohibited from advocating a particular set of religious beliefs. The guidelines, issued in December 1995, acknowledge that religion is a significant historical force that enables students to “understand the complex dynamics at work in human society.”

An American Civil Liberties Union 1st Amendment specialist said schools can comply with the rules by using “state-approved” textbooks, which are carefully scrutinized by educators before being released to public school districts across California.

“If you can bring in your own materials, then the whole effort of trying to come up with textbooks that are appropriate for use within the public school system is subverted,” said Doug Mirell, a member of the ACLU board.

But teachers who use Applied Scholastics–the cornerstone of Hubbard’s “Study Technology”–call the works effective classroom tools based exclusively on Hubbard’s educational ideas, not his religious principles. Smith, who is planning her Northwest Charter School for about 100 students, said in interviews last week that she has been using the Hubbard materials in her current job at Esperanza Elementary School in downtown Los Angeles with great success.
* * *

Later in the week, two more Los Angeles district teachers who describe themselves as Scientologists, Don Woods of Jefferson High School in South Los Angeles and Vicki Gordon of Luther Burbank Middle School in Highland Park, said they too have been using Applied Scholastics in their classes.

Woods and Gordon met with The Times on Friday at Applied Scholastics’ central office in Hollywood, down the street from the Church of Scientology’s headquarters.

All three teachers said Study Technology kindles young minds by addressing three fundamental barriers to learning.

The first is known as “lack of mass”–when there is no object to illustrate a concept. Students overcome the problem by relating ideas to real life.

The second barrier is the “skipped gradient”–those steps in a learning process that students don’t understand. Students conquer difficult material by studying it incrementally.

The third and most important barrier is the “misunderstood word.” As the Hubbard reasoning goes, students cannot learn what they do not understand; so they use dictionaries to look up unfamiliar words in a process called “word clearing.”

Fatigue, worry and frustration are among the “manifestations” symptomatic of students who have come up against those barriers and struggled to learn their lessons, according to the philosophy.

Gordon said she has found the Hubbard ideas so illuminating that she now uses them as the primary tool in her classroom. She said she keeps six copies of “Learning How to Learn” in her classroom–some bought by her, others donated.

Gordon also said she ran a seminar two years ago to introduce colleagues at Luther Burbank to Hubbard’s three barriers to learning.

“This technology empowers students,” said Gordon, 42. “It creates literacy.”

Gordon said she has been a Scientologist for 10 years, but insists that her religion has no bearing on her professional life.

“I don’t feel like I have anything to hide,” said Gordon, who teaches sixth, seventh and eighth grades. “I feel like I’ve come across something that helps people.”

Gordon’s principal could not be reached for comment. But Gordon’s students offered glowing praise for the Hubbard methods in thank-you letters they wrote to their teacher at the end of the school year, letters Gordon produced for The Times.

One, dated May 28, 1997, mirrors the very language contained in the Applied Scholastics texts, and even refers to one of the books by name.

“What I learned from the ‘Learning How to Learn’ book is that now I know what to do when I have . . . lack of mass or even have a skipped gradient,” the student wrote. “I know how to handle it. It has made me feel very good about myself because if I had not done this book I would not have gotten this far on my learning.”

Gordon and other teachers say the value of Hubbard’s methods has gotten lost amid the uproar over Hubbard himself.

One of the most ardent Hubbard proponents is Smith, a Santa Clarita resident who wants to open her own kindergarten-through-eighth grade school in the Sunland-Tujunga area. Northwest, if approved, would join 15 other charter schools in the Los Angeles Unified system.

* * *

Northwest’s curriculum would include standard texts as well as the Hubbard books, if they are approved by a “curriculum committee” of parents, teachers and administrators, she said. Smith’s proposal–which made no mention of the Hubbard materials when it was unveiled before the school board last week–is scheduled for its next hearing on Aug. 20.

Esperanza Principal Rowena Lagrosa, who praised Smith’s teaching in a recent recommendation letter, said she was unaware that Smith was using the Hubbard techniques. She called Smith’s methods “pedagogically sound,” adding that Smith has been using “effective strategies that any other teacher would employ.”

But Lagrosa said she turned down a request about two years ago by Smith to buy Hubbard books for her class “because they were written by L. Ron Hubbard. To my knowledge, he represents a religion.”

Lagrosa reprimanded Smith during the same period for writing a letter on school district stationery seeking advice on the legality of purchasing Hubbard materials for her students.

Woods, an English teacher at Jefferson High, shares the same enthusiasm as Smith.

* * *

He introduced a peer tutoring program at Jefferson in 1995 that emphasized the “word-clearing” strategy. The tutoring effort was abandoned after one semester partly because Woods was needed to teach another class. But the effort is described in a two-page summary on the Applied Scholastics Internet Web site.

Woods has continued to use the word-clearing method in his English classes. Before his students read Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” or Hemingway’s “Old Man and the Sea,” they scan the texts, pick out words they don’t understand, jot them down and define them. Then they read the works with their own mini-dictionaries on hand.

“Word-clearing is the champ,” said Woods, 49. “I want to help students get unstuck, to have them realize they can learn.”

Woods said he keeps a copy of Hubbard’s “Study Skills for Life” on his classroom desk and says that students are welcome to review it.

Woods’ boss, Principal Virginia Preciado, said that she was unaware of the Hubbard materials in his classroom and that she would like to review them. But she expressed confidence in Woods, who has been at Jefferson five years.

“I don’t feel he is teaching anything religious or something that would be inappropriate,” Preciado said. “As a classroom teacher, he is very concerned about the students getting the basic skills they need to move forward.”

Woods would like the Hubbard Study Technology expanded beyond his classroom.

“I personally would like to see word-clearing used prominently in the district at all levels,” he said. “It’s a procedure that can be used by anyone for lifelong learning.”

Saved by a Rumor

Robert A. Jones

This was the week, among other things, when Los Angeles dabbled with the notion of pouring tax dollars into a school that planned to catechize its students with Scientology-inspired texts. It was like watching a train wreck about to happen.

At week’s end, the debacle may have been avoided. The Board of Education caught on to the gambit and some of those involved now predict that the board’s vote, expected sometime in the next 30 days, could be negative in the extreme.

But the point is this: The application for Northwest Charter School almost cruised past the board without anyone knowing about the Scientology connection. More amazing yet, school officials say the sponsors broke no rules when they failed to disclose it.

Thus the story of Northwest really amounts to something more than a possible gambit by the Scientologists. It’s a cautionary tale about the waves of reform washing over the education system and how that reform can easily get converted into something truly, horribly embarrassing.

In case you missed the news accounts, here’s the Cliffs Notes version of the Northwest affair:

* * *

In June, public school teacher Linda Smith submitted an otherwise innocuous proposal for a charter school in the East San Fernando Valley. A “charter” school is something new; it can operate with virtual independence of school board rules while continuing to receive public money.

Smith’s application tends toward the standard buzz phrases. Under its Statement of Philosophy, the application intones: “Instruction is based upon continual assessment and evaluation, goal setting, and specialized forms of instruction leading to performance based assessed skills acquired, accomplished or mastered.”

You get the picture. For 62 pages it goes on and on, revealing almost nothing about the true nature of the school. Nonetheless, the application effectively jumps through all the legal hoops required by the school district.

For example, the district demands that the applicant explain “what it means to be an educated person in the 21st century and how learning best occurs.” It also demands to know how the school will measure “pupil outcomes.”

But nowhere does the district ask the applicants, in effect, who they are. Might they be a church? Might they believe in hourly headstanding to facilitate a nourishing rush of blood to the brain? How about high colonics or exercise in the buff?

Not having asked, the district didn’t know. So the Northwest application wound through the bureaucracy and, last week, landed on the board calendar. A copy of it sat in front of each board member in all its opaque splendor.

And just maybe it could have rolled toward approval. Except that a few rumors had started to float around. Board member David Tokofsky, for one, had heard the rumors. When Linda Smith came to the hearing table, he began to probe delicately, hoping she would volunteer the information. She didn’t.

Amy Pyle and Duke Helfand, two reporters at The Times, had also heard the rumors. They watched while Tokofsky failed to get Smith to spill.

In frustration, Tokofsky wandered back to the press table and started speaking his doubts to the assembled reporters. Then he blurted out, “Do you think she’s a Scientologist?”

* * *

The effect was like throwing a match on gasoline. Within a few hours, to extend the metaphor, the application for Northwest School was toast–or well on its way to it. Smith admitted that she has been a Scientologist for 16 years and, more important, she planned to use school texts inspired by Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard.

In explaining this, Smith tried out an interesting distinction. Scientology, she said, is the religion founded by Hubbard. But the teaching philosophy founded by Hubbard is a technology. Not a religion at all. So it’s OK.

It’s not OK, of course. And now that all the layers have been peeled back, Northwest School may never open its doors.

We were saved, but not by the system designed to save us. All the bureaucrats and all the forms and questions failed. They produced 62 pages of gobbledygook about “goal setting” and “assessed skills acquired, accomplished and mastered.”

What saved us was the serendipity of rumor. Someone knew of Smith’s affiliation, and they whispered it to someone else who picked up the phone and passed it along.

A slender thread by which to hang the integrity of school reform. But right now, it’s all we’ve got.

© Copyright Los Angeles Times

Education: L.A. district officials are concerned that organizer’s ties to Scientology could raise 1st Amendment questions.

By DUKE HELFAND, L.A. Times Staff Writer

A proposed charter school in the east San Fernando Valley is receiving close scrutiny from Los Angeles Unified School District officials who are concerned about the organizer’s ties to the Church of Scientology and are questioning whether church teachings would appear in the new public school.

Advocates of the Northwest Charter School acknowledge that they want to employ teaching methods developed by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, but say his system emphasizes common-sense strategies appropriate for a public school setting and children of any religion.

After hearing of a possible Scientology link, however, school board President Julie Korenstein placed the charter school proposal on the agenda of the board’s closed-door session for discussion Monday. She and other board members expressed concern that the Hubbard materials could violate the separation of church and state.

“We cannot turn our public school students and monies into a religious institution,” said board member David Tokofsky. “It’s a problem on a fundamental constitutional level.”

Scientology was founded by Hubbard in the early 1950s as a movement combining philosophy, modern psychoanalysis and Eastern religion into a system aimed at self-improvement. Criticized as a cult unforgiving of defectors and a front for a profit-driven business, the controversial movement received official status as a tax-exempt religion in 1993 from the Internal Revenue Service.

Its potential ties to the proposed Northwest Charter School are especially sensitive because under state law, charter schools are allowed to operate outside many rules that constrain curriculum and budgets, even though they usually receive their state funding through their sponsoring school districts.

The author of the Northwest Charter School petition, Los Angeles school district special education teacher Linda Smith, insisted that the teaching approach she wants to employ–known as Applied Scholastics–is nonsectarian.

Smith, who said she has been a Scientologist for 16 years, maintained that the method’s books are drawn from Hubbard’s educational “technology” and not his religious tenets.

“Scientology is a religion. This is Hubbard Study Technology. It has nothing to do with religion,” said Smith in an interview at Applied Scholastics’ central office in Hollywood, just down the street from the Church of Scientology’s headquarters. “It’s totally above board.”

Applied Scholastics President Ian Lyons said the organization is an “independent, nonprofit corporation” separate from the church, with its own board of directors. However, he acknowledged that Bridge Publications, which prints Applied Scholastics materials, also produces literature for the Church of Scientology.

Under Smith’s charter school proposal, about 100 students would attend kindergarten through grade 8 on a new campus to be established in the Sunland-Tujunga area; a site has yet to be secured.

There are now 15 charter schools in the Los Angeles Unified system, almost all of them on pre-existing district campuses.

Smith, 45, would be the principal of her proposed school, and most of her students would come from private schools after their parents heard about her plans through “word of mouth,” according to her written proposal and interviews.

The curriculum would include standard texts, as well as Hubbard’s Applied Scholastics, which Smith said helps bolster student achievement by addressing three “barriers” to learning: Students use dictionaries to look up words they do not understand, they apply their lessons to real life, and they master each rung of material to obtain a thorough understanding of a subject.

Smith said she has been using the methods informally for two decades as a special education teacher, including the last six years at Esperanza Elementary School in downtown Los Angeles.

Lyons, who sat in on the interview, said that other schools in the district use the method, as do schools elsewhere in the state and around the country. Applied Scholastics maintains its own site on the Internet.

“I have found an incredible tool,” said Smith. “I use it because it works.”

Still, 1st Amendment experts say that, regardless of any merits, the Hubbard materials present the school district with troubling constitutional and legal issues.

“I think that the [district] ought to do everything within its power to ensure that this is not a subterfuge for teaching about the Scientology religion,” said Doug Mirell, a 1st Amendment specialist and American Civil Liberties Union board member. “The concern is certainly a legitimate one, and one the school district ought to take seriously.”

The charter school controversy is not the first time that Smith has come to the attention of school district officials for her Scientology ties, as Smith acknowledged Wednesday.

Smith said she was reprimanded by her principal at Esperanza in early 1995 after she wrote a letter on school district stationery seeking advice on the legality of purchasing Hubbard materials for her students.

Smith defended her actions, saying her only mistake was using the school letterhead.

Her principal at Esperanza, Rowena Lagrosa, praised Smith’s teaching skills in a June 9 letter of recommendation. “Miss Smith has done a remarkable job of individualizing the instructional program of her students,”

Lagrosa wrote. “Additionally Miss Smith has worked toward building a community of learners within her room who are respectful and caring toward one another.”

When Smith made her pitch for the Northwest Charter School before the Board of Education on Monday, she did not mention her involvement with Applied Scholastics or Scientology, nor did her 62-page charter school proposal.

Smith said she did not mention the details because she has yet to be licensed by Applied Scholastics to use the Hubbard materials, and because Northwest’s “curriculum committee” ultimately would have to decide what to teach in the school.

Smith’s proposal drew mixed reactions from the board. Some members called it vague, while others applauded her novel teaching ideas, which include individualized plans of instruction for students and a “quality control department” in which each student must demonstrate knowledge of a given lesson before he or she can advance to new material.

Proponents of the charter school said that Smith is being treated unfairly. They say the school would serve a diverse population, including the children of Scientologists, Jews, Catholics and others.

“Religion has nothing to do with a public school,” said Evelyn Hoy of a La Crescenta. The mother of four said she is a Methodist and her husband is a Roman Catholic and they want to send their children to Smith’s school. “There is no connection between church and state here.”

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