Werner Erhard and Associates, also known as WE&A or as WEA, operated as a commercial entity from February 1981 until early 1991. It replaced Erhard Seminars Training, Inc. as the vehicle for delivering the est training, and offered what some people refer to as personal and professional development programs. Initially WE&A marketed and staged the est training, but in 1984 the est training was replaced by a more modern, briefer, rigorous and philosophical program based on Werner Erhard's teachings called "The Forum". In 1991 Erhard sold the assets of WE&A to a group of employees, who later formed Landmark Education. Erhard then retired and left the United States.
Timeline
February 1981: Werner Erhard and Associates set up.
1984: WE&A replaces the est training with "The Forum".
1991: Erhard sold the assets of WE&A to a group of employees who later formed Landmark Education.
A scientific study conducted by a team of psychology professors concluded that attending the Forum had minimal lasting effects — positive or negative — on participants. The research won an American Psychological Association "National Psychological Consultants to Management Award" in 1989. The results of the research study appeared in two articles in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology in 1989 and in 1990, and in 1990 in a book titled Evaluating a Large Group Awareness Training.
Subjective surveys
The abstract of Charles Denison's PhD dissertation for the College of Education, "The Children of est: A Study of the Experience and Perceived Effects of a Large Group Awareness Training ", reported that the Forum had a definite structure, curriculum, and pedagogical approach. Denison's study identified the primary concepts of The Forum, called "distinctions". Data indicate that qualitatively significant results were produced in participants' self-assessed functioning in cognitive, affective, and behavioral domains. Most participants attributed significant life effects to their experience. Public-opinion analyst Daniel Yankelovich did an investigation of the response of participants to their experience of the Forum. Yankelovich reported that "more than seven out of ten participants found the Forum to be one of their life's most rewarding experiences". The study reported that 95 percent of Forum graduates believe the Forum had "specific, practical value" for many aspects of their lives, and 86 percent of those surveyed said that it helped them "cope with a particular challenge or problem".
Conceptual evaluations
Professor of Communication Studies, Bruce R. Hyde, in his paper "Saying the Clearing: A Heideggerian Analysis of the Ontological Rhetoric of Werner Erhard", discusses the Forum as the beginnings of Erhard's work in developing transformational education utilizing an ontological approach rather than an epistemological approach.
Impact
One of the more common results of the Forum was the healing of relationships with parents. One facet of this course was to urge participants to stop blaming their parents for their problems and begin to express their natural love for them that was often buried under accumulated resentments that went unexpressed. Many projects to come out of the Forum involved working to foster value, camaraderie and opportunities to serve the community. As an example of this a group of participants in a seminar threw a Christmas party at a homeless shelter by planning and preparing the party, cooking and providing the food, and participating with the people in the shelter. As a result, they "came away with the gift of knowing we are them and they are us, homeless or sheltered, employed or out of work, broke or salaried; we recognized ourselves in their eyes and in their plight."
