Ron Says…
“Environment is another grossly overlooked factor in contemporary education, since environment is the one thing which can give data a proper weight. Many a navigator can sail the devil out of a ship in a classroom and get lost trying to find the end of a pier. Education which is done against strictly academic background is stultifying* and most of its importance is lost because it has not exercised the analyzer in weighting and deriving. A classroom is no proper place to learn to run a steam locomotive….
“A man can be given rudimentary instruction in reading, writing, history, literature, music, manners and mathematics. Anyone keeping him in school, as just school, after he learns these is wasting his manhood. A man should be in the environment of his chosen profession from the age of at least fifteen. He should be educated after that in short spurts in school as he desires to know more. And he should be educated by professionals in his own business. If this happened to more men and women there would be many more engineers to whom one could say with confidence, ‘Build me a bridge,’ or housewives about whom one could say, ‘She’s a swell cook and her man’s happy. And you ought to see her kids.’ ”
“There is no such thing as being overeducated. There is such a thing as being badly educated. The length of time in a school is no criteria of either one.”
L. Ron Hubbard
from lecture
“Educational Dianetics”
29 August 1950