[Editor's note: The following article was set to run in the St. Louis Argus on October 13, 2005. While at the printer, the publisher pulled the article and replace it with a press release from Applied Scholastics. A senior vice president of Applied Scholastics, Mary Adams, invited the publisher, Eddie Hasan, to visit their headquarters with his daughter to meet Isaac Hayes.]
Hazelwood Public Schools Rejects Applied Scholastics [Scientology]
by Peter Downs
October 11, 2005 -- Chris Wright, the superintendent of Hazelwood Public Schools, has written a sharply-worded letter to the chief executive officer of Applied Scholastics [Scientology] rejecting her claim that the company is working with Hazelwood Public Schools to tutor students from low performing schools.
In the letter, dated October 4, 2005, Wright characterizes the claim by Bennetta Slaughter of Applied Scholastics as "patently false."
Wright continued: "We have repeatedly indicated that we are not interested in your services, not willing to participate in your training programs, do not want your materials, and will not enter into any association with Applied Scholastics."
Adding that Hazelwood Public Schools intends to provide any tutoring required by federal law itself, Wright concluded her letter to Slaughter stating: "We do not need or want an association with Applied Scholastics."
In a separate letter to Kent King, commissioner of the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Wright explained her rejection of Applied Scholastics. She said that the company, which has its world headquarters in the Hazelwood school district, has approached the district many times during the last three years about working together. "We investigated them thoroughly... and found that they were closely connected to the Church[sic] of Scientology. We made the decision that this connection was not in the interests of our children and refused all efforts to "partner" with the District."
Ellen Mahler-Forney, a spokesperson for the Church[sic] of Scientology in University City, said Wright's attitude reflects a misunderstanding of the church. "We are a new religion[sic]," she said, and "any new religion[sic] has a lot of misunderstanding to overcome." http://www.xenu.net
While taken aback by the tone of Wright's letter, the officers of Applied Scholastics said it does not affect their plans to tutor students from Hazelwood Public Schools. "It is not [Wright's] decision," said Mary Adams, senior vice president for external affairs [Office of Special Affiars] at Applied Scholastics. "The choice is the parents. If they chose us to tutor their children, the school district has to pay for [it], because we are an approved provider in Missouri."
Wright, however, is urging King to reevaluate the approval of Applied Scholastics. "As the Department reviews renewal applications from potential providers for Supplemental Education Services this year," she wrote, "I hope that you will evaluate those programs which have already been approved and establish some criteria for their approval."
Wright's was not the only letter King received last week urging him to reevaluate Applied Scholastics. David Touretzky, research professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, also sent a letter detailing his claims that: "What Applied Scholastics calls secular 'study technology' is actually covert instruction in the Scientology religion[sic]."
Adams and other representatives of Applied Scholastics and its parent company, Association for Better Living and Education International [i.e., the Scientology Corporation], denied that Applied Scholastics covertly instructs students in the Scientology religion[sic]. They said the Church[sic] of Scientology does use "study technology," but only as a way to help church[sic] members study their religious[sic] texts, not as part of the religion[sic] itself.
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Union Leader Praises Williams
by Peter Downs
A leader of the union representing teachers and other staff in the St. Louis Public Schools Tuesday evening thanked Superintendent Creg Williams for his actions in the Applied Scholastics controversy.
As previously reported in the Argus, two middle school principals in St. Louis Public Schools had sent their teachers to the Applied Scholastics campus in Spanish Lake to learn the teaching ideas of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church[sic] of Scientology.
Last month, after complaints from some of the teachers involved, Williams ordered a stop to those principal-mandated training visits.
Byron Clemons, the first vice president of the St. Louis Federation of Teachers and School-Related Personnel, said that the principals at Fanning and Long Middle Schools then launched a hunt to find out who had complained about Applied Scholastics. He said they interrogated teachers without a union representative present, and began to harass those they thought had complained to their union and to school board members.
Clemons said he and union president Mary Armstrong first found out about [the] hunt during a visit to Applied Scholastics. The chief executive officer of the company, Bennetta Slaughter [http://whyaretheydead.net], mentioned they were trying to find out who complained about the company's training, and displayed some emails about teacher interrogations.
Union leaders later met with Williams about the complaints of harassment and interrogation of teachers. Williams then told the principals to stop.
"Thank you for stopping the witch hunt," Clemons said to Williams at the school board meeting Tuesday.
School board member Bill Purdy said he supported Williams' action. "We have policies that prohibit retaliation against any employees who exercises their right to complain to their union," he said.
Clemons also raised concern that Applied Scholastics could get money from the school district for "tutoring" students. Applied Scholastics is on a list of companies approved by the State to provide tutoring services under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The school board would vote later in the evening on a resolution approving the tutoring option for children in low performing schools.
Clemons urged the St. Louis school board to exclude Applied Scholastics from the tutoring program as, he said, Hazelwood was doing. Ken Brostron, the school district's attorney, had advised the school board that federal law required that the district let parents choose a tutor from the entire list of companies approved by the State.
The school board approved the tutoring option, with Applied Scholastics included, by a vote of 5-1-1.
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CALENDAR
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From Dave Touretzky:
[... my argument, which I made to the Missouri Commissioner of Education, is that [Scientology] "study tech" is *inherently* Scientological, and cannot be separated from the religion[sic]. Here are some examples:
1. The concept of "lack of mass" that ASI teaches to students, and the list of physical symptoms such a lack supposedly engenders, is based on a Scientology principle called "out-havingness". Out-havingness supposedly results from an imbalance between "mass" and "significance". These are spiritual [sic] concepts, and the claimed association of physical symptoms such as headaches and dizziness with this lack of mass condition is devoid of any scientific basis. It is a purely religious[sic] belief.
2. Applied Scholastics' supposedly secular textbooks, such as "Study Skills for Life" and "The Basic Study Manual", teach three versions of word clearing: methods 3, 9, and 7 (in that order). What they don't reveal is that methods 1, 2, 4, and 5 involve use of the E-meter, a crude lie detector device that Scientology insists be used only for spiritual[sic] counseling by trained Scientology ministers. Information about the E-meter is available here: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Secrets/E-Meter You can find a much more detailed discussion of this and other issues at the http://StudyTech.org web site.
In addition, ASI's parent organization, the Association for Better Living and Education (ABLE), is run by members of Scientology's paramilitary Sea Organization, all of whom have signed billion year contracts to serve the church[sic] over countless reincarnations. ABLE's regional offices in cities like New York and Clearwater are actually located inside Church [sic] of Scientology buildings. Yet ASI goes to great lengths to deny any connection with Scientology. While it is permissible for faith-based organizations to provide supplementary instruction to public school students, Applied Scholastics' flagrant misrepresentations about its religious [sic] ties should not be overlooked in considering its application as a service provider.
The US Department of Education's No Child Left Behind guidelines state:
"Neither Title I nor other Federal funds may be used to support religious practices, such as religious instruction, worship, or prayer. (FBOs may offer such practices, but not as part of the supplemental educational services.) FBOs, like other providers, must ensure that that the instruction and content they provide are secular, neutral, and non-ideological." -- http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/guid/suppsvcsguid.doc
Applied Scholastics clearly fails this test.
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