Reversing Attitudes That Lead Students to Drop Out of School

A new brochure published by the Church of Scientology features an Applied Scholastics-licensed school that defies national averages when it comes to the attitudes that spell the difference between graduation and dropping out.

A survey of students at the Delphian School, conducted by an independent researcher, found student attitudes overwhelmingly positive and completely at odds with results of the High School Survey of Student Engagement (HSSSE) conducted by the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy of Indiana University.

The Delphian School is licensed by Applied Scholastics International to use Study Technology developed by American author, humanitarian and Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard, and Delphi administrators say it is the use of this technology that accounts for the vastly superior results of the Delphian survey compared with the national norm.

The Delphian School survey found that 100 percent of the students felt their teachers care about them personally; 100 percent like going to the Delphian school; 95 percent find their studies interesting—not boring; 95 percent feel their teachers will always listen to the ideas of the students; 97 percent look forward to school and 88 percent feel their teachers care about what they think.

By comparison, the HSSSE found 66 percent of high-school students are bored in school on a daily basis, two out of three are bored every day, and fewer than 2 percent are never bored in school.

The HSSSE also looked into attitudes behind school dropout rates, as some 20 percent of students surveyed had considered dropping out of school. Their reasons for considering this: 73 percent didn't like the school, 61 percent didn't like the teachers, 60 percent did not see the value in the work they were being asked to do, and 25 percent felt no adults in the school cared about them.

These attitudes and the role they play in students dropping out are even more relevant when viewed against the results of a study by Derek Messacar and Philip Oreopoulos of the University of Toronto, published in an article in the winter 2013 issue of Science and Technology. They found lowering high school dropout rates requires improving attitudes toward school—that dropping out “must be understood not as a single event but an outcome that begins with school disengagement, often long before the dropout finally decides to stop coming to class.” The need to address these attitudes is underscored by their finding that dropouts not only earn less money than those who graduate, but are also more likely to end up in jail, be less healthy and less likely to marry or be happy than those who finish high school.

Improving these attitudes and outcomes depends on handling their underlying cause. This is the purpose of Applied Scholastics International, which has been making Study Technology available internationally for more than four decades.

Applied Scholastics offers training, curricula and materials based on Mr. Hubbard’s research on the subject of study. It is a fully independent, nondenominational organization supported by the Church of Scientology and by Scientologists who are dedicated to raising educational standards throughout the world. It comprises well over a thousand groups spanning 70 countries, that have trained nearly 140,000 educators and helped millions of people with Study Technology.

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.