Scientology: How We Help—Empowering Kids with the Gift of Reading

A new brochure released by the Church of Scientology in March describes a program tutors like Lynn Malin of La Crosse, Wisconsin, use to introduce kids to the joy of reading.

Lynn Malin’s volunteer activities earned her the 2012 Adult-Youth Award from the Boys and Girls Club of Greater La Crosse, Wisconsin. Since 2007, her after-school program has been helping kids discover how much fun it is to read.

Malin trained as a tutor at the Applied Scholastics International campus in Saint Louis, Missouri. Applied Scholastics trains teachers, tutors and mentors in Study Technology, researched and developed by American author and humanitarian L. Ron Hubbard.

Malin has incorporated a technique into her program known as “Reading Aloud,” described in the Applied Scholastics textbook The Basic Study Manual. This technique helps increase the literacy of students of all ages by locating and clearing up words they don’t understand in the materials they are reading—no matter what those materials may be.

“Our volunteers read ‘fun’ books with the children,” she says. “The kids get to pick the book that they want to read and they have their own personal tutor to help them. Kids are interested in so many things and we find out what they would like to learn about and get books from the library on those subjects for them to read.”

Malin describes how she and the other volunteers do this: “We help the kids with the meanings of the words and grammar issues and we use the Internet and anything else we can lay our hands on to get them familiar with the physical objects associated with the words.”

For children who are not up to reading aloud at all, they begin with the Applied Scholastics Teaching Modern Phonics course.

“My favorite moment was when a third grader told me that this was the best day of her life. She said ’I learned to wink and snap my fingers, and now I can read.’ Study Technology works every time,” says Malin. “Being able to read what you want to read is such a gift. How do I feel about being able to share that gift with kids? I feel empowered.”

The Church of Scientology has published a new brochure Scientology: How We Help—Applied Scholastics, Achieving Literacy and Education, one of a series of publications presented to meet requests for more information about the Scientology religion and its support of global humanitarian initiatives and social betterment programs. For more information, visit the Scientology website at www.scientology.org/AppliedScholastics.

Applied Scholastics International is a secular nonprofit public benefit corporation that addresses head-on the problem of illiteracy by making L. Ron Hubbard’s discoveries in the field of education and literacy broadly available. It has trained nearly 140,000 educators and has helped more than 39 million with Study Technology. The organization works with hundreds of affiliated schools and educational programs throughout the world, providing the effective learning tools developed by L. Ron Hubbard.