Our Approach to Education

Alvin Toffler, an American author, stated "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." This makes learning how to learn a paramount subject in this new age and one of the key things that is taught at Applied Scholastics Academy.

Learning to read - for real

Reading is an important subject. At the beginning of the year, a tried and tested phonics-based reading program published by Effective Education Publishing, was instituted in the school. This showed that some children who had learned through other methods such as the whole word system had gaps in their phonics knowledge. Taking them back to correct those gaps, although seeming to slow them down, actually helped them do better in the long run. Test results so far show an average improvement in grade level of 7 months in a 5 month period in reading, sentence comprehension and spelling.

True comprehension means true understanding, not guesswork

One of the aspects of education we do pay a lot of attention to at this school is ensuring that the words being used are understood. Our freedoms depend on our children's ability to use a dictionary and on their understanding of words. That is a broad statement to make. Some might say controversial. Some teachers in other types of schools may disagree with this idea violently that such importance is placed on the defining of words especially if they follow the methodological idea that one can learn the meanings of words by the contextual clues. However, it is easy to point out the shortfalls of learning by context by just asking someone to work out the meaning of the word “on” from the sentence “I live in a house on the water.” This does not literally mean your house is floating on the water, but really means by the water or on the banks of the water. That tiny word “on” makes such a difference when you have the wrong meaning. How about the common word “run” as in “Does your car run?” This might make one conjure up images of cars with legs!

Extend this principle to flying an airplane. What if the pilot has a wrong meaning for some facet of flying because he worked it out from the context rather than checking to find out what meaning was correct for the context? If the pilot only has the concepts 95% right, is that enough for you to feel confident flying in that pilot's plane?

Understanding of words – a tried and tested educational approach

This stress on words also came from Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States. He said that one needs to define the words being used when learning a science. Did you know that Malcolm X became literate while he was in prison by studying the dictionary word by word, and learning how to use each meaning of the words.

A man called Johnson O'Connor did a study of Corporate Vice Presidents in the United States to find out what factors made them successful. He found just one. It was not a university degree nor even finishing high school. It was this one point: they all had a large vocabulary with a precise understanding of the meanings of the words.

The importance of dictionaries

This year is a special year. It is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Noah Webster. He is the author of the first American Dictionary of the English Language. Noah Webster had strong moral principles and a love for the future of this country. Our modern Webster's Dictionaries are derived from his first dictionary published in 1828, which is still available today from good bookstores. In that first edition Noah Webster stated that he wrote the dictionary for this reason: to preserve the freedom of the American people.

He foresaw a time when words could be mis-defined and misused to trick the people into believing something different - something observable in some political speeches and even in the current practice of labeling children. And so today, by teaching the use of the dictionary along with the other tools of Study Technology, we will not only have literate children, but also have them armed with the tools to preserve their freedom. L. Ron Hubbard, author and humanitarian, stated, “Today's children will become tomorrow's civilization.” As this is observably true, we had better make sure our children are given the best opportunities we can afford them, right now.

Effective learning

This school does that. Each teacher is trained in Study Technology and in how to communicate effectively with children. Children are treated as individuals, not herds. We teach children how to learn so they can resolve their own learning difficulties and know how to get help when they need it. We believe that children should be able to work things out for themselves and educate them thoroughly on the skills they need to do research to discover information for their use, not just parrot back facts for an exam. Our stress is always toward a purposeful understanding and ability to use the information they are learning. Make an appointment to visit the school and discover for yourself.