Horace Mann

Alex Newman has written an excellent article in the February 4th issue of The New American magazine entitled From Educational Excellence To Mediocrity in which he brings up several issues I have also dealt with in the past.

He noted that the Puritans in Massachusetts were “outliers in America” in the area of having the government start to enact governmental education laws. For all the good things the Puritans may have done, in this one critical area, the promotion of governmental education laws was a horrible mistake. In fact, labeling it as a grievous error would not be an exaggeration.

Mr. Newman has written: “The first giant step away from traditional, classical, Christian education toward socialistic and humanistic indoctrination and the dumbing-down of American education began under Horace Mann. In 1837, again in Massachusetts, Mann was appointed as the first-ever ‘Education Secretary’ of an American state. And as a Unitarian who rejected the Bible as the inspired and inerrant Word of God, Mann had big ideas about reforming the highly successful educational system that existed at the time. His efforts would ultimately lead to the fundamental transformation of education in America, putting it on course to end up where it is today.”

In fact, one of the reasons Mann and other Unitarians, and socialists as well, wanted to “reform” the educational system in this country so very badly was that they wanted to blunt the effect that church schools were having on students. The fact that mostly Reformed churches influenced the educational efforts of that day ticked them off to no end. So you could say, and not be off-target at all, that they started the public school system to fight against the Christian influence that was being had on education. They wanted the Christian influence gone! And being “wiser in that day than the children of light” (the church) they pretty much accomplished it.

John Dewey

But Mann, and socialist Robert Owen, were, unfortunately, not the last act in this pedagogical nightmare. Alex Newman also observed: “After Mann came John Dewey.” While some of you all may not have heard of Horace Mann, most folks have heard of John Dewey, though they probably have not been told very much about him and what he really stood for, and that’s not by accident. Newman stated, quite accurately, that “Dewey was, to put it bluntly, an anti-Christian socialist and humanist with a fanatical zeal for reforming mankind to fit his atheistic, collectivist vision…While Mann went to Prussia for educational inspiration, Dewey would visit Vladimir Lenin’s Soviet Russia, returning home to shower the brutal mass-murdering regime with praise in the New Republic for creating a ‘collectivistic mentality’ through education and propaganda…As a model, Dewey frequently pointed to the 1888 novel Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy that envisioned a communist America in the year 2000. It was a radical vision, especially at that time, but it animated Dewey and his supporters in their quest to re-shape America by re-shaping its children by re-shaping their education.” Donnie Kennedy and I dealt somewhat with Edward Bellamy in our book Lincoln’s Marxists.

If you will but stop and reflect a moment, you will begin to see that this is the foundation of public education in this country–from Unitarian Horace Mann to socialist Robert Owen to socialist John Dewey–and beyond. This was, indeed, The Unitarian/Socialist Foundation of Public Education (the title of a booklet I wrote years ago).

Those among you that are truly concerned about what your kids are being taught in public school need to separate (secede) from the public school system before you forever lose your kids.

February 4, 2019

~ The Author ~
Al Benson Jr. is the editor and publisher of “The Copperhead Chronicle“, a quarterly newsletter that presents history from a pro-Southern and Christian perspective. He has written for several publications over the years. His articles have appeared in “The National Educator,” “The Free Magnolia,” and the “Southern Patriot.” I addition to that he was the editor of, and wrote for, “The Christian Educator” for several years. In addition to The Copperhead Chronicles, Al also maintains Revised History.

He is currently a member of the Confederate Society of America and the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and has, in the past, been a member of the John Birch Society. He is the co-author, along with Walter D. Kennedy, of the book “Lincoln’s Marxists” and he has written for several Internet sites as well as authoring a series of booklets, with tests, dealing with the War of Northern Aggression, for home school students.

He and his wife now live in northern Louisiana.

Mr. Benson is a highly respected scholar and writer and has graciously allowed Metropolis Café to publish his works. We are proud to have his involvement with this project.