What is Competence?

 

BE COMPETENT 

(Excerpt from point 17-2 of the 'Way to Happiness' by L. Ron Hubbard; a book that is both taught and applied at Greenfields) 

 

"The main process of learning consists of inspecting the available data, selecting the true from the false, the important from the unimportant and arriving thereby at conclusions one makes and can apply. If one does this, one is well on the way to being competent.

The test of any “truth” is whether it is true for you. If, when one has gotten the body of data, cleared up any misunderstood words in it and looked over the scene, it still doesn't seem true, then it isn't true so far as you are concerned. Reject it. And, if you like, carry it further and conclude what the truth is for you. After all, you are the one who is going to have to use it or not use it, think with it or not think with it. If one blindly accepts “facts” or “truths” just because he is told he must, “facts” and “truths” which do not seem true to one, or even false, the end result can be an unhappy one. That is the alley to the trash bin of incompetence.

Another part of learning entails simply committing things to memory—like the spelling of words, mathematical tables and formulas, the sequence of which buttons to push. But even in simple memorizing one has to know what the material is for and how and when to use it.

The process of learning is not just piling data on top of more data. It is one of obtaining new understandings and better ways to do things.

Those who get along in life never really stop studying and learning. The competent engineer keeps up with new ways; the good athlete continually reviews the progress of his sport; any professional keeps a stack of his texts to hand and consults them.

The new model eggbeater or washing machine, the latest year’s car, all demand some study and learning before they can be competently operated. When people omit it, there are accidents in the kitchen and piles of bleeding wreckage on the highways.

 It is a very arrogant fellow who thinks he has nothing further to learn in life. It is a dangerously blind one who cannot shed his prejudices and false data and supplant them with facts and truths that can more fittingly assist his own life and everyone else’s.

There are ways to study so that one really learns and can use what one learns. In brief, it consists of having a teacher and/or texts that know what they are talking about; of clearing up every word one does not fully understand; of consulting other references and/or the scene of the subject; sorting out the false data one might already have: sifting the false from the true on the basis of what is now true for you. The end result will be certainty and potential competence. It can be, actually, a bright and rewarding experience. Not unlike climbing a treacherous mountain through brambles but coming out on top with a new view of the whole wide world.

A civilization, to survive, must nurture the habits and abilities to study in its schools. A school is not a place where one puts children to get them out from underfoot during the day. That would be far too expensive for just that. It is not a place where one manufactures parrots. School is where one should learn to study and where children can be prepared to come to grips with reality, learn to handle it with competence and be readied to take over tomorrow’s world, the world where current adults will be in their later middle or old age...

If one cannot get those around him to study and learn, one’s own work can become much harder and even overloaded and one’s own survival potential can be greatly reduced.

One can help others study and learn if only by putting in their reach the data they should have. One can help simply by acknowledging what they have learned. One can assist if only by appreciating any demonstrated increase in competence. If one likes, one can do more than that: another can be assisted by helping them—without disputes—sort out false data, by helping them find and clear up words they have not understood, by helping them find and handle the reasons they do not study and learn.

As life is largely trial and error, instead of coming down on somebody who makes a mistake, find out how come a mistake was made and see if the other can’t learn something from it.

Now and then you may surprise yourself by untangling a person’s life just by having gotten the person to study and learn. I am sure you can think of many ways. And I think you will find the gentler ones work best. The world is brutal enough already to people who can’t learn."

What to do if your child just doesn't like reading?

Sometimes I’m confronted with a child who doesn’t like to read.

He or she usually knows that reading is supposed to be a good thing, and it’s common too to find children who think that there may be something wrong with them if they can’t “take” to reading for whatever reason. They worry that they are “stupid” in some way, especially if others in their peer group are avid readers and they see that these students race ahead in their work in academic subjects largely because they read so easily.

It is a worry. But it is not usually very difficult to solve if the right materials are on hand.

It’s important to note first that the key to improving reading under normal conditions comes in two parts, in my experience:

1. Making sure that words which are not understood in some way are looked up in an appropriate dictionary and fully cleared so that they can be used easily and retained, and
2. Having a volume of appropriate reading material available.

The combination of volume reading and clearing up misunderstood words as the student goes along works wonders; Reading Age, as measured by many standard tests, tends to skyrocket when these two things work together, with Reading Age often leaping ahead by years in the space of a few weeks or months. Reading a lot and clearing up a lot of words is as close as you can get to a “magic bullet” in the area of reading.

But what about the child who simply doesn’t like reading?

Is this simply a case of “too many misunderstood words” leading to blankness and then disinterest?

My experience teaching English over the last 14 years suggests not; something else can come into play when a child opens a book and is confronted by a whole page of closely-written text. Even before that child has gotten into the detail of actually looking at the words, he or she has “switched off” -to them, reading equals boredom.

And that’s the key to solving reading for them: if they are bored, what are they lacking is sufficient pictures or action or mass to go with the page of written text.

I usually start to unravel this with a child in this position simply by finding a book which has pictures in it. This doesn’t mean dropping back into earlier years of reading material necessarily, as this can reinforce the child’s mistaken notion that they are somehow “behind” other students of their age; there is normally plenty of appropriate material around which makes use of pictures and even videos in this audio-visual age. It’s a case of following the interests of the child and locating something which has a good balance of pictures and significance.

This can lead into the controversial area of comics.

Look at any comic book from the 1940s to present day and you will normally find that the narrative is being conveyed largely through pictures rather than text. That’s what makes it a comic book. Word bubbles or small boxes containing explanatory notes (like “Meanwhile, back at Headquarters...”) are outweighed by large, often dynamically drawn, often colourful and detailed pictures which provide interest for the reader, young or old. Comics thus tend to engage those readers who find whole pages of text, text, text somewhat daunting.

Is it then damaging in any way to expose children to comics as a reading remedy? I can only answer from my own experience and my answer is most emphatically not: my own childhood reading began with picture books and exploded into the world of comic books, of which I still retain a collection of over 5,000 dating back to the early 1960s. Comics made me into a reader; they excited and interested me and led me into other worlds of literature and adventure and did me no harm whatsoever (though perhaps some colleagues might disagree!)

In short, it is usually the absence of pictures and “mass” associated with pages and pages of text which put some students off reading. Once pictures are supplied, the balance rights itself and reading commences with enjoyment. Given the availability of enough reading material of this kind, children in this position usually swiftly move on to other books where words predominate over pictures, and develop a love for reading at their own pace.

Grant Hudson
Head Teacher, Greenfields School

About Grant Hudson

Grant Hudson

An experienced classroom teacher and tutor and an accomplished editor, Grant Hudson also has a background as a London business consultant and is the founder of the Inner Circle Group, an internet-based club with headquarters in West Sussex but with members all over the world.

Hudson has also produced and directed an amateur whole-school theatre group for almost a decade and has created and managed many individual and group programmes addressing personal and school situations as Head Teacher of the independent Greenfields School, which included organising and managing clubs and group outings and mentoring other teachers through the UK Qualified Teaching Standards requirements, as well as personally tutoring and mentoring university entrants.

He is a published poet, and has established a school Tolkien Society. He has a Certificate of Journalism from the Australian College of Journalism and has held literary workshops and study groups in England, Australia and Canada.

About Greenfields

From the 2011 Independent Schools Inspectorate Report: Greenfields is a non-selective, non-denominational mixed school, welcoming pupils of all faiths, located in Forest Row, near East Grinstead, Sussex. It was founded in 1981 in response to parent demand for a school using the educational philosophy of L Ron Hubbard. The school aims to ensure that all pupils leave feeling enthusiastic about life, being ethical, highly productive and motivated; arm them with basic knowledge and skills for living, with more advanced knowledge and skills in their areas of personal interest; equip them with the study skills to enable them to grasp and apply the data of any subject in the future; enable them to possess a desire to achieve something positive for mankind and civilisation, and to excel and become leaders in their chosen fields. The school is distinctive in that it aims to teach pupils how to study through the use of study technology developed by L Ron Hubbard.


If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact us:

• + 44 (0) 1342 822 189
• info@greenfieldsschool.com
• Greenfields School
  Priory Road
  Forest Row
  East Sussex
  RH18 5JD