The Weekly Sam: Alpha-Phonics Finds Huge Success in Zimbabwe School
Camp Constitution houses the Sam Blumenfeld Archives https://campconstitution.net/sam-blumenfeld-archive/ which consists of the work of the late homeschool pioneer, author and lecturer Sam Blumenfeld. Sam passed in June of 2015 and willed most of his papers, books, and recordings to me. Thanks to Camp Constitution’s newspaper editor Mark Affleck and our webmaster Eric Conover, the archive was created. It contains PDF versions of some of his books, articles, newsletters, manuscripts, and correspondence. It also has many of his lectures and interviews in audio and video format. Since its inception in 2015, the archive has received millions of views from people all over the world-mainly in the United States. Thousands of people have downloaded Sam’s Alpha-Phonics. It consists of 128 reading lessons. The archive also has an on-line version of Alpha-Phonics with all lessons in audio and video format. It was our good friend Bill McNally. founder of the Samuel L. Blumenfeld Literacy Foundation http://alpha-phonics.weebly.com/ that brought Sam into the Windham, NH Cable TV station in 2012 and taped Sam teaching the lessons.
We occasionally receive testimonials, and last year, we received one from Mr. Godknows Matizarofa ,the founder of Nottingham Junior School, a private Christian school in Harare, Zimbabwe. Mr. Matizirofa was looking for a reading program that would replace his school’s look-say which was not producing good readers. Godknows found our archive, printed out pages of Alpha-Phonics and began using it in his school. He calls it “The Blumenfeld Approach.” Within a short time, he saw excellent results and contacted us to request hardcopies of the workbook. We were more than happy to make the donation to his school. Last week, we had the opportunity to interview Godknows on our weekly program “The Camp Constitution Report” which airs on Catching Fire News. https://catchingfire.news/2022/12/19/alpha-phonics-finds-huge-success-in-zimbabwe-school/
Godknows pointed out something which we never considered: Alpha-Phonics is in American English. I joked that his students may end up with Brooklyn accents. Godknows has had success introducing “The Blumenfeld Approach” to government schools in Harare. Phonics has been soundly rejected in American government schools which led Sam to conclude that U.S. government schools do not want highly literate students; they want dumbed-down students who will embrace an atheist and socialist worldview.
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Charlotte, NC 28210-5028
