R.I.P. Samuel Blumenfeld: Author, Master Educator, Champion of Freedom
Millions of people who can read today owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Samuel L. Blumenfeld (shown), America’s foremost apostle of phonics over the past half century, who died on June 1, one day after his 89th birthday. I was privileged to know him, as a friend and colleague, for more than 30 years.
I first became acquainted with Sam Blumenfeld’s writings in the early 1970s. I was a college student at the time and had switched my course of study from pre-veterinary medicine to psychology and education. The “reading controversy” that had been launched in 1955 with the publication of Dr. Rudolph Flesch’s best-seller, Why Johnny Can’t Read and What You Can Do About It, was back in full swing, following a period of relative quiescence. Sam’s book The New Illiterates (1973) rekindled the debate, exposing the ludicrous basis of the destructive look-say methodology that was mentally crippling millions...
Craig Mussulman | 7/6/2009
