THE BARRIERS TO STUDY

L. Ron Hubbard discovered three primary barriers which keep one from successfully studying a subject. Despite all that has been written on the subject, these three barriers, simple as they are, were never isolated as paramount to effective education. For want of this data, the toll in poorly educated students, unfulfilled potential and frustration is incalculable.

The First Barrier—Lack of Mass

Attempting to educate someone without the mass (or object) that he is going to be involved with can make study exceedingly difficult. This is the first barrier to study.

For example, if one is studying tractors, the printed page and the spoken word are no substitute for an actual tractor. Lacking a tractor to associate with the written word, or at least pictures of a tractor, can close off a person’s understanding of the subject.

Definite physiological reactions occur when trying to educate a person in a subject without the thing actually present or available. A student who encounters this barrier will tend to feel squashed, bent, sort of spinny, sort of dead, bored and exasperated. He can wind up with his face feeling squashed, with headaches, and with his stomach feeling funny. He can feel dizzy from time to time and very often his eyes can hurt. These reactions are quite common but wrongly attributed to poor lighting or studying too late at night or any number of other incorrect reasons. The real cause is a lack of mass on the subject one is studying.

The remedy to this barrier is to supply the thing itself—in the example above, the tractor, or a reasonable substitute for one. Some educators have instinctively known this, but usually it was applied only to younger students and it certainly was never given the importance it warrants at any level of education.

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