Why People Fail At Study And What To Do About It

By Author: Nick Broadhurst
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Have you ever read a book and started to fall asleep, yet a few moments before you were wide awake? Almost everyone has. Have you ever read a page and then gotten to the bottom and realised you could not recall anything you just read? Have you ever been frustrated in reading a subject and no matter how many times you read the text, it just did not make sense to you? Have you ever seen "academic burnout" at schools?

While all this phenomena is usual there is an underlying simple cause and a very simple solution.

The reason people cannot understand what they are reading is simply that they are reading past words or symbols they do not understand. This was the primary educational discovery by the Scientology founder, L. Ron Hubbard in the 1970s.

Here is an example. Read this. "As the crepuscule approached, the young children became quiet."

Now, you as a reader do not know what this means. If you ask someone to tell you what the sentence means, they will try to guess it a few times and then maybe work out they do not know what the word crepuscule means.

The word crepuscule means twilight or darkness. ...
... Now read the sentence again, and it makes perfect sense.

This phenomena can be tragic for some children at school. What if you had a subject, called, Satellite Studies, but no one told you the meaning of the word satellite. You never had it defined for you and you never had pictures to work with, and you had never seen one. How far would you get on that study?

Ask a group of students, "Who has trouble studying MATHEMATICS?' Then when half the class put up their hand, ask them if any teacher has gone over the definition of the word Mathematics? Did the teacher even know what it meant himself? The word mathematics means, the science of numbers and shapes, and the word science comes from Latin, meaning to know. So mathematics would mean knowing about numbers and shapes. This is, pretty simple, right? Teach that to a class and they brighten right up.

Words have meaning. Go past one without knowing the meaning and you lose the meaning of that sentence, and maybe the information in the whole page is lost to you. Go past several words that you do not know the meaning of and the chapter is lost. A dozen more misunderstood words gone past will see you give up the entire subject as "unknowable." That is how the mind works. One for one, this is true.

The solution is easy. Get a dictionary that equates to the educational standard of the person doing the study. Look up the words and define the word not understood. We call this word clearing. Clear all the words you or the student do not understand about the subject and he will become very literate in that subject. I promise you this is so.

There is a special way to use a dictionary so as to get the greatest literacy out of it and this can be taught to children easily, but this is the subject of the next article.

In Scientology, the exam pass rate is 85%, and any student can get that same pass mark in any subject at school if they use this word clearing method. Words have meanings. Just be determined enough to not be a classroom dummy. Pass as an A grade student instead. One last thing to note is that when students go past words they do not understand their IQ drops, and those who clear their words, their IQ goes up.

So teachers please make sure your students really understand what the words mean. They will truly admire you and love the subject you teach.

So parents, it is up to you. Here's to your kids education and a brighter and more literate future for mankind.
About Author:
Nick Broadhurst is the Executive Director of the Church of Scientology of Canberra. He has been in Scientology for 20 years and has read over 20,000 pages, and listened to over 300 taped lectures on the subject. Scientology Educational Courses , The Basic Study Manual Course