Samuel Blumenfeld
(1926-2015)
Samuel L. Blumenfeld had a lifelong interest in eliminating illiteracy from the time as a child when he taught his illiterate mother to read and write her name. He was a political conservative who did editorial work for the John Birch Society and contributed many articles to right-wing news websites such as World Net Daily.
Blumenfeld was an enthusiastic supporter of home schooling. He contributed many articles to Home School Digest. He wrote the book How to Start Your Own Private School: And Why You Need One (1972) and Homeschooling: A Parents Guide to Teaching Children in 2000. He called his intensive phonics program, aimed particularly at home schoolers, Alpha-Phonics. His book How to Tutor (1973/2015) has three parts, (1) his systematic, intensive phonics reading program. (2) His cursive handwriting program and (3) his elementary arithmetic program.
Blumenfeld published several polemical books claiming that left-wing politicians were conspiring to destroy American education, deliberately creating illiterate children with the whole-word and whole-language books and curricula.
These books include The New Illiterates (1973/2021), NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education (1984), The Whole Language/OBE Fraud: The Shocking Story of How America Is Being Dumbed Down by Its Own Education System (1995), and The Victims of Dick and Jane (2003).
