Inside Scientology - Janet Reitman [161]
Kendra felt better. She thought to herself, Okay, I'm six now, so when I'm ten, I should look for a four-year-old who's a Scientologist, and that'll be my dog. She did that quite a bit when people died, made that mental calculation, though she never really followed it up. But she had a general notion that the world was going to be full of Scientologists soon, each one reincarnated from the last, and that one day, in the cycle of one of her lifetimes, she would again meet everyone she ever loved. "It was comforting, and it helped you get over death," she said. "I guess it's parallel to the idea of heaven."
Heaven, though, was a concept Kendra never knew much about. Like the idea of God or the messiah, it belonged to the world of wogs, who Kendra believed were evil at worst, but simply helpless at best, caught in what Hubbard called the "labyrinth"; only Scientology provided a clear route out of this confused state. Unlike Natalie, who was once reprimanded for referring to a non-Scientologist as a wog, Kendra's family and their acquaintances used the term liberally.
Frightening concepts about the wog world permeated Kendra's childhood. Wog society, she believed, was a place where psychiatrists, whom she was raised to fear and considered "the devil," had total control, particularly over children. In wog schools, she was told, kids, particularly the smart and active ones like her, were force-fed medication to calm them down. The fear that she might be sent to a dreaded public school, where she'd be diagnosed with a learning disability and given Ritalin, loomed over her every time she got in trouble. "I remember hearing, 'If you went to public school you'd have to tiptoe around being too smart in case they try to drug you,'" she recalled. "That totally freaked me out, since there was no protection from psychiatry in public school. I even heard that sex ed was taught in public school with a psychiatric agenda."
Kendra's own school ran much differently. Scientology schools all claim to be secular but replicate the org experience to a greater or lesser extent. At Delphi, a formal "org board" hung on the wall, listing many divisions and job titles found in a Scientology church; the school ran so much like a Scientology organization, former students say, that it mirrored the experience almost completely.
Teachers were known as "supervisors," as they also were at church. Counselors were called "ethics officers." Those who administered discipline were "masters at arms." When it came time to be tested, students would report to a separate division known as Qualifications, or "Qual," where, to make sure kids were being honest about how fully they understood what they had learned, they were quizzed verbally while hooked up to an E-meter. The exact same procedure is used for students in courses at Scientology orgs.
Socially, Delphi worked like an org as well, maintaining ethics files on every student, which included reports of every rules violation a child ever committed. From the time that they can write their name, Scientologist children, like their parents, are taught to report on one another, as well as on themselves, if they have taken part in a "crime," such as chewing gum when it wasn't allowed or stealing a kiss with a classmate, which is considered "out-ethics" behavior.
Located in the foothills of the Angeles National Forest, Delphi looks like any private school in southern California, with grassy playing fields; expensive facilities for art, music, and computer work; and a research library, which includes all of the classics as well as numerous history and foreign language texts and a great number of encyclopedias and dictionaries. The school, which enrolls about 175 students, most of them Scientologists, offers a standard academic curriculum as well as a Scientology curriculum.
At the primary school level, students begin their encounter with the basics of Hubbard's study tech through a book called Learning How to Learn. As they progress, they are introduced to other Scientology concepts, such as ethics and