The Landmark Forum
Education vs Landmark

a. OBJECTIVE
Education: Training and preparing everyday people for all sorts of work fields. You need to study in order to be intellectually fit for most jobs.

Forum: Changing people�s viewpoints on life. Making it easier to be happy in life and achieving desired goals. A noble endeavor indeed. But all of this has nothing to do with education.

b. EFFECT
Education: Uniform. The effect will relate to the subject studied. For example, it is safe to say that most people who study Law will be lawyers, or practicing law somehow.

Forum: Uniform in the sense of zealotry ("The most important thing in my life"). Varied and unexpected outcome. For example, one cannot tell beforehand whether someone who entered the Forum with marital problems, will divorce afterwards, or benefit from a better marriage. Actually, it doesn�t matter, both would be considered success.

c. MEANS
Education: Varied in location and participation. Usually more than one teacher.

Forum: Uniform. At least 100 people crowded in a room. One instructor.

d. VALUE OF INVESTMENT
Education: Respective money to value ratio. That is, the more you pay, the better overall quality of education you should get (better teachers, a more respected degree, better facilities etc). The outcome is sometimes predictable. For example, "High grades in this university will get you a 20% higher salary than a similar person from another university."

Forum: Strict investment, undeterminable value. The amount of money paid varies only slightly from one county to another. One cannot predict the value (if at all). For example, an impossible sentence: "Attending the Forum will make you 20% happier than joining Scientology."

e. CONTENT
Education: Predefined. Based on common knowledge, accessible to all. Usually based on scientifically proven facts, or mainstream philosophy and theories.

Forum: Undefined, hard to describe mixed bag. Based on ideas of one guru of a person - John Paul Rosenberg, aka Werner Erhard. One can only guess by examining his history. One can find traces of eastern and western philosophy, psychology, Scientology, metaphysics and more. There is more than a remote possibility that the knowledge base behind the Forum is obscure from public, i.e. no resource material is available, in order to prevent critical examination of it.

f. DURATION
Education: Depends on the subject studied. Usually years in the academic area.

Forum: Strict. A three day course followed by several complementary meetings.

g. LABOR FORCE
Education: Professional but not necessarily from within the same organization. For example, a French professor can work in an American university. All labor force is fully paid according to job and/or title.

Forum: Instructors are insiders. So is most of the rest of the labor force. Most of the people are volunteers, hence, are not getting paid. It is almost impossible to define what is a Forum "pro", other than, perhaps, a person with the ability to "sell" (implant, if you like) the Forum�s content onward.

h. FINANCE
Education: Unless dealing with private institutions, most of the educational system is public. Thus, it is not for profit and the tuition fee (if exists) does not finance the personnel�s salaries. Instead, tax money does. In this way, corruption is being prevented. People can always pay more and benefit from private education, but it is not a necessity. In certain cases, a stipend is offered to selected students.

Forum: A for-profit, private organization. Terms of payment are strict. An interesting case, in which a highly profitable organization actually relies on voluntary working force, which is the majority in the company.

That much sums up the difference between education and "Landmark Education".

"So what?" some of you may say. "So they have a some flaws in their claims, as long as they don�t break the law, who cares? You still haven�t presented a strong argument against it." I haven�t until now. Time for the scary stuff. Let�s examine why do people go there, what goes on there and the possible consequences.

Why people do it