Education, literacy & civilization [antikvár]

have been engaged in a study of applications of technology to illiteracy and illiterate or semiliterate populations," dedared L. Ron Hubbard, "and found somé simple levels of approach." If seemingly a casual statement, it is not. That study of illiteracy spanned at least thirty-five years, and culminated in a body of work that has factually changed the way in which we perceive language; while as for those "simple levels of approach," we are, very truthfully, speaking of the answer to all that comprises a twentieth-century educational crisis. To those not yet familiar with the works of L. Ron Hubbard, let us begin with a few equally simple statements of fact: As the founder of Dianetics and Scientologv, he has received wide acclaim from many quarters; for drawing upon the central truths of those subjects, he has provided solutions to a wide rangé of critical problems. LRH drug rehabilitation methods, for example, are generally recognized as the singularly most successful and are now used in hundreds of facilities internationally. Likewise, LRH methods for the rehabilitation of criminals are regularly described as the world's most effective, and currently employed in somé three hundred prisons across Europe, the Americas, Australia and New Zealand. Then again, there is all the name L. Ron Hubbard means in terms of morál resurgence, a revitalization of the arts, sane and equitable administrative methods and, through Scientology itself, the realization of our most meaningfiil spiritual dreams. Yet when we speak of what L. Ron Hubbard has brought to the field of education, we are speaking of a very special commitment. For quite in addition to the founding of Dianetics and Scientology, he is alsó one of the most widely read authors of all time; and it was with a love of words possessed only by our finest writers that he came to address the crisis of illiteracy. "The inability to read," he noted in 1979, "is far, far more widespread and worse than anyone has imagined." As we shall see, he was right. But even considering the generally conceded