Landmark Education - Evaluations and Reviews

Evaluations and Reviews

The New York Times reporter Henry Alford summarized his review of The Landmark Forum by saying "Two months after the Forum, I'd rate my success at 84 percent. I'm more prone to telling loved ones and colleagues, in person and without glibness, that I love or admire them. But I still operate from a base position that people are a lot of effort." Time reporter Nathan Thornburgh, in his review of The Landmark Forum, said "At its heart, the course was a withering series of scripted reality checks meant to show us how we have created nearly everything we see as a problem …I benefited tremendously from the uncomfortable mirror the course had put in front of me."

The Irish Mail on Sunday says the effects of The Landmark Forum "...can be startling. People find themselves reconciled with parents, exes and friends. They have conversations they have wanted to have with their families for years; they meet people or get promoted in work."

Landmark Education makes extensive use of web-published and word-of-mouth testimonials from customers to portray its effectiveness, and supplements these with studies, surveys, and opinions.

Some observers question whether and to what degree Landmark Education courses benefit participants. Others criticize the use of volunteers by Landmark Education; others highlight the connections with other groups and with Werner Erhard. Landmark has been criticized by some for being overzealous in encouraging people to participate in its courses.

Some newspaper articles about the Forum mention rumours or allegations that it is in some sense "cult-like". Landmark rejects the cult label and "freely threatens or pursues lawsuits against those who call it one." Journalists Amelia Hill with The Observer and Karin Badt from The Huffington Post have witnessed the Landmark Forum and concluded that, in their view, it is not a cult. Hill wrote, "It is ... simple common sense delivered in an environment of startling intensity." Badt noted the organisation's emphasis on "'spreading the word' of the Landmark forum as a sign of the participants' 'integrity'" in recounting her personal experience of an introductory "Landmark Forum" course. Part of this theme included repeated comparisons between program participants and Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. Badt expressed the opinion that the course's word-of-mouth marketing methodology and its considerable focus on proselytizing amounted to "brainwashing". She also noted that, "At the end of the day, I found the Forum innocuous. No cult, no radical religion: an inspiring, entertaining introduction of good solid techniques of self-reflection, with an appropriate emphasis on action and transformation (not change)", pointing instead to problems lying with uncritical participants.

Landmark Education makes no claims of a religious nature but the relationship of the training programs to religion sometimes occurs in reviews of the training. While reviewers have noted the lack of religious elements in the programs or the compatibility of the programs with various religions, some academic sources suggest the programs possess religious features, address participants' spiritual needs, or are even a form of new religion. In their 2002 book Cults, Religion, and Violence, authors David G. Bromley and J. Gordon Melton noted that some governments were overly restrictive towards New Religious Movements and Personal Development groups, illustrating this by the appearances of Landmark Education and many other organisations in lists of "Sectes" published by government commissions in Belgium and France.

Following a series of investigative articles in the national daily Dagens Nyheter and programs on the private TV channel TV4, Landmark Education also closed its offices in Sweden as of June 2004.

According to Le Nouvel Observateur, the French office of Landmark Education closed in July 2004 after labor inspectors, following a site visit that noted the activities of volunteers, made a report of undeclared employment.