oday’s children will become tomorrow’s civilization,” wrote L. Ron Hubbard in 1950. “The end and goal of any society as it addresses the problem of education is to raise the ability, the initiative and the cultural level, and with all of that the survival level, of that society. And when a society forgets any one of these things it is destroying itself by its own educational mediums.” Decades later, Mr. Hubbard’s observation has proven nightmarishly accurate and the continued disintegration of many of our institutions may prove inevitable unless the deterioration of our educational systems is arrested.

     To cite but a few disturbing facts: Over 25 percent of all students leaving or graduating high school lack the necessary reading and writing skills minimally demanded of daily living; the American high-school dropout rate hovers at approximately 30 to 50 percent in inner-city areas; according to the president of a teachers association, up to 50 percent of all new teachers quit the profession within the first five years; and, Scholastic Aptitude Test scores of American students have sunk to levels considerably lower than those achieved by students in the mid-1960s.