Study Technology

However, the method has many critics, including former teachers, claiming that Study Technology and its associated schools are intrinsically linked with religious aspects of Scientology.

[4] Religious scholar J. Gordon Melton said that Hubbard wrote the Study Tech materials to help people who joined Scientology with a low level of literacy, and that the materials are used within the Church of Scientology “not to proselytize for the religion but to teach people how to read.”[5] According to Study Tech, there are three barriers that prevent students from learning: "absence of mass", too steep a gradient, and the misunderstood word.

[6] In accordance with L. Ron Hubbard's beliefs, the method denies the existence of psychiatric conditions, or any biological learning difficulties.

[1] Scientology classrooms are equipped with modeling clay and "demo kits", small collections of everyday objects, such as corks, caps, pen tops, and paper clips.

[8] One of the course requirements for people learning to be Scientology trainers is to model in clay the premise of each paragraph of the chapter on communication in Hubbard's book, Dianetics 55!.

[11] In 1997, the California Department of Education reviewed the five Study Tech books as potential "supplementary texts" and found them to not be overtly religious.

[17] However, by 2012 Toronto, as well as Georgia, San Antonio, Texas, St. Louis, and Nevada had backed away from supporting Study Tech, after numerous complaints from educators and parents.