Our Philosophy

Mr. L. Ron Hubbard, educator and humanitarian, has given several lectures and written several articles on how education should be handled so that the children’s innate joy of learning is preserved and so that their self-determinism is not destroyed. This includes also L. Ron Hubbard’s very popular Study Technology that is used the world around.

Included in this philosophy is a way of guiding children in their studies so that they are learning with a purpose and aligning their studies with their goals in life. This gives children a reason for education, other than something that must be done because parents, teachers and the government have said it is so.

Another major point in our philosophy is not stressing education to the point of terrifying children. Education is generally an exciting adventure for children, until they have been forced to do things they don’t understand, made terrified with failing or getting bad grades and overall made into a puppet in our education system. Our students are worked with until they have regained their own willingness to learn, have decided for themselves what they want to do and why education will help them and therefore are moving on their studies because they want to, not because they are made to.

Last, but not least, our teachers are trained to use a lot of affinity and communication with their students, guiding them and encouraging them. A student who has been made wrong enough throughout life tends to be wary of authority and balk at orders. Our teachers and other staff are trained to handle these reactions so that the students become relaxed and willing. We strictly stay away from any authoritarian techniques in teaching or handling students. The gentleness and thoroughness used to teach and guide our students makes it so children who fail in other schools due to behavior problems tend to thrive in our classroom.

These are just a few of the many points that Mojave Academy has incorporated into our programs.

How We Handle the Students

There is a lot of false data out in the world among parents, teachers and child-care personnel regarding handling of children.

The first idea that is false is that you would handle children any differently than you would handle an adult.

Here is a datum from L. Ron Hubbard on the handling of children: “…children are not dogs. They can’t be trained like dogs are trained. They are not controllable items. They are, and let’s not overlook the point, men and women. A child is not a special species of animal distinct from man. A child is a man or a woman who has not attained full growth.”

He then states, in italics, “Any law which applies to the behavior of men and women applies to children.”

Mojave Academy’s sole purpose is to help children. They are important to us. Their welfare and comfort are also important to us.

Some people find it hard to change the normal society viewpoint of treating kids. There is the datum “Children are to be seen not heard.” Boy, can you imagine being treated like that? Or how about the idea that a child should listen and do whatever the adult says, because, well, we know everything right?

Have you ever worked for someone who considered that everything they said was the law and that you had to follow their orders without question? Even if you have not, can you imagine how you’d feel? There would be no place to make decisions, no allowance of judgment or self-determinism. There would be no life. This is how a lot of parents handle their kids. “Take out the trash. Don’t you dare say no to me!”

Since you wouldn’t like being treated that way now, and since we would not either, we do not treat our students that way here.

Here is another quote from L. Ron Hubbard regarding this: “How would you like to be pulled and hauled and ordered about and restrained from doing whatever you wanted to do? You’d resent it. The only reason a child ‘doesn’t’ resent it is because he’s small. You’d half murder somebody who treated you, an adult, with the orders, contradiction and disrespect given to the average child.”

We can decide how to do things, and how to live life. We expect that the students here can as well. If they cannot make the right decisions, then we help them with education and drilling to learn how to use judgment. That is part of our program.

The students here know that if they do the things expected of them that keep them in exchange with the group, they will get rewards and be treated importantly. They know that if they do not follow the rules and finish their cleaning duties and other necessary actions that they would not be rewarded and not be part of the group. They then choose on their own to do the right things. There is no force, punishment or make wrong to “help” them choose.

There are rights that we have as faculty and adults that the students don’t have. There is something to look forward to in growing up, and we want the students to see that and know we have those rights. But that does not change the way we treat them.

How Our Classrooms are Different (and they are)

You will find when stepping into our classrooms during class time that this is unlike any other classroom. Maybe it appears to be not as organized as you thought it should, or maybe there doesn’t seem to be a lot of “control”. Look again.

L. Ron Hubbard once stated that almost all education has been hammered into people as a “terribly important activity.” He went on to say “Actually, it will be as much use to him as it is considered casually. This accounts, in some measure, for the tremendous difference in the attitude toward education of one trained by casual and interested tutors and one trained between the millstones**Millstone: either of a pair of flat, round stones between which grain is ground of the public school system, with all the horrors of the examination for passing. And accounts for the complete failure, on the part of universities, to educate into existence a leadership class. The secret lies entirely in the fact that education is as effective as it is pleasant, unhurried, casual, and is as ineffective as it is stressed to be important.”

We have allowed the children to have a place where they can learn what they want to learn, take the courses they are interested in and read or write as they want. There is no pressure to learn, there are no grades that they can feel bad about, there are no exams that they have to get anxious about.

We look for the child’s willingness to learn and help him get his ability up on learning what he wants to, and becoming what he wants to become in life.

A child’s willingness to learn is based on whether or not he has a purpose to learn that subject. If he does not have the purpose, we do not enforce the subject until he has come up with a purpose (or until we have helped him find the purpose).

So the students in our class are studying what they are interested in. They may be doing this study on the floor, out on the porch, or at a desk. That is fine, as they should be able to study anywhere.

We request that they do not chatter unnecessarily and disturb other students, and if they can not keep that in, then they are required to study somewhere else. If a student does not want to study that day and by being in the classroom they are distracting others, then they can leave and do something outside. There is no “controlling” students to do what we want them to do, but instead “guiding” them with good control to study what they want to study.

Our “teachers” are not so much teaching the kids as they are helping them learn and giving them guidance if they would like it.

Based off of this, you are not going to find a classroom with a teacher in the front at the blackboard, and the students sitting in rows, sitting up straight and holding their pencils just so…. Instead you will find the students studying in many different ways, having fun, working with each other, etc.

The students learn each of their subjects at their own speed, getting through each until they have learned what they need from that subject. They will finish school when they are able to achieve what they want with life. They can easily go onto college from this school if that is what they want, or they can create their own job directly out of school.