8	THE VOLUNTEER MINISTER'S HANDBOOK
4lIssue*BTB 14 September 1969  1 Learning Processes, Education
by Evaluation of Importance
Education by importance is ali right as iong as you are in terrific ARC with your people. If you are not in terrific ARC with the people you have, you have to get them to relax about the body of data you are teaching before the importance of data shows up.
A person can be hung up on the ali-importance and everythingness of a subject. He is so nervous of dire consequences that he will eventually have an accident. People are ofien thoroughly educated into this attitude. li is ali so important it will kiil him if he doesn't know. This inhibits his power of choice and ability to evaluate data. Education today is taught by consequence, not by the fact it is a sensible thing to do. In the world, importance essentiaily means punishment.
To teach someone a subject just have him seiect out the unimportances of the subject. He will start to think everything is important but coax him on with ARC and control and he will eventually come up with something unimportant, i.e., you are teaching him how to drive a tractor. He will find the coat of paint on the crank unimportant. You acknowledge and ask him to find something else unimportant. Keep at this repeating it and repeating it and eventually "alI-ness" will start to disintegrate. He will select down to the most important controis of the tractor and the next thing you know he can drive a tractor! He won't have a craving-to-know anxiety and won't be nervous at ali. You are teaching by de-evaluation of importance.
It is interesting that a person who never selected out the impor. tances of Scientology or any subject, and believes every datum must b memorized, you will find, has a history of being punished within ar inch of their lives. There is a direct coordination here.
Education is basically, fixing data, unfixing data, and changin existing data, either by making it more fixed or less fixed.