Relationship of the Look-say Teaching to Idolatry (Remastered)

CR101 Radio - Podcast Network · Jan 8, 2026 · 56m

Rushdoony and Samuel Blumenfeld argue that progressive public education especially John Dewey’s “look-say”/whole-word approach functions as a modern form of idolatry by replacing the primacy of God’s Word with the primacy of the image, training children to guess meaning from pictures rather than read words accurately. Blumenfeld contends this shift is not neutral pedagogy but a deliberate program to “dumb down” literacy so a managerial elite can rule a collectivist society: high literacy produces independent thinkers, while look-say produces functional illiteracy, inaccurate reading, and a…