Category Archives: Mr. Benson’s Classroom

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 Board of Directors 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.

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.

Benson: Folks, it just ain’t that long ago

Most young folks today think that everything that happened before they were born is ancient history, and therefore, totally irrelevant. Hopefully, as they grow in age and maturity they will shed this truncated worldview and grasp the fact that the past has a large influence on the future. I have noted, over the years, that if our view of the past is faulty, then our vision for the future will be also, Most historians today give our young people a faulty view of the past because it is one they were taught themselves. Continue reading

“The Battle Hymn of the Republic” ~ Not A Christian Hymn

John Brown of Kansas

Many year ago now, when we lived in West Virginia, the church we attended used a hymnbook that contained “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” At the time I didn’t know much about that song (I won’t call it a Christian hymn because it isn’t) but when folks got to choose what hymns they wanted to hear in the Sunday evening service that song was often chosen. At that time the pastor in that church was from Georgia, and I can imagine he cringed every time that song was chosen in a service. I remember one time, one of the congregation said to him, in jest, “We can’t sing Dixie. It’s not in the hymnbook.” If the truth be known The Battle Hymn of the Republic should not have been in a Christian hymnal either, but unfortunately it is still in many. Continue reading

Benson: The Ongoing Battle Over Public School Books

It’s History Repeating Itself

It seems like the public schools in Hillsborough County, Florida have been having problems similar to those experienced in Kanawha County, West Virginia public schools 49 years ago now. Considering the true agenda of the public education system in this country – indoctrination rather than education – should anyone really be surprised?

And it looks as if this has been going on for while. In an article published back in March of this year in the Tampa Bay Times it was noted that “This Book Is Gay” a non-fiction book that offers guidance to LGBTQ youth will no longer be available at any Hillsborough County middle school. Continue reading

Benson: Exercises In Futility

Almost half a century ago now, when the textbook protest in Kanawha County was going on, at one of the school board meetings there, one of the school board members was caught in a blatant lie in some of his remarks and someone attending the meeting called him on it. The school board member, caught in the act, just laughed and continued on with his remarks.

He was not there to shine the light of truth on anything. He was there to lie to the parents about what the public schools in Kanawha County were doing to their kids. At that point, the Kanawha County School Board had one honest member on it – Alice Moore – who tried to do what was right for both parents and children. The rest of the school board wasn’t, to put it bluntly, worth spit! Continue reading

Benson: The Planned Public School Perversion Of Our Children

An article on The Gateway Pundit for May 28th provided some information worth noting on what goes on in public schools and who is doing some of it. If you’ve had problems with Target over their “gay” pride merchandise you may find that is only the tip of the iceberg. The Gateway Pundit article tells us: “Retail giant Target has partnered with GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network) for years… GLSEN is a group that provides sexually explicit books to schools, pushes gender identity throughout public school curricula, and advocates policies that keep parents unaware of their child’s in-school gender transition… It was Barack Obama who first pushed sex education to kindergartners back in 2007 – he even pushed sex education to kiddies legislation… the media mostly hid this from the American public.” Sounds like King Barack the first really did have a plan to “fundamentally transform the United States” but he didn’t want the public to grasp just what it was! Continue reading

The Real Purpose of Education

The late theologian, R. J. Rushdoony, was very concerned over the issue of education in this country and what the real reasons for that education were.

Years ago he made the statement: “Statist educators want to create a people who will be Creatures of the State and its Schools, not creatures of God; that’s the goal. You see it’s a religious conflict and it’s a religious goal with these people. You can never fully grasp their objective until you see the religious aspect of it…. Education is fundamentally and essentially religious… If you want to know what the religion of the people of the culture is, examine their education.” Continue reading

Theology And The War Of Northern Aggression

The War of Northern Aggression aka the Civil War had many reasons, economic (tariffs), constitutional (states rights), and even conspiratorial. There were certain people, both north and South of Mason-Dixon that had as their objective the destruction of the Constitutional Republic the Founders gave us. Abraham Lincoln was one of these. And the idea of a One World Government was not new, even in 1860. Continue reading

Benson: “When You Reach For The Money The Handcuffs Go On!”

The state of Utah has a new homeschool voucher law which is supposed to help homeschool families with educational expenses. At least that’s what we’ve been told. The ink was hardly dry on the legislation before some were concerned that it could be used by some homeschool groups to possibly promote neo-nazi and white supremacy propaganda. It seems such happened someplace in Ohio and some Utah parents were concerned that could happen in Utah. And I expect this concern was genuine on the part of some parents.

I suppose this concern will eventually lead to some do-gooder proposing that Utah enact some legislation that will act as guidelines forced on those who take any state money–and forced on all homeschoolers if they feel they can get away with that! Continue reading

Benson: The Theology Of “Woke

According to a lady interviewed on Fox News recently, many parents are beginning to get fed up with “woke” indoctrination being perpetrated on their children. One place this occurs is in public schools across the country. One way to combat this satanic (and it is satanic) indoctrination is to get your kids out of public schools. While you may not get rid of all of it that way, as you will get some of it on television and in the movies, you will get rid of a large portion of it by getting the kids out of public school. Continue reading

Benson: Critical Race Theory and The Local Public School

In March of 2021 writer Christopher F. Rufo did an article for Hillsdale Colleges’ publication Imprimis in which he dealt with Critical Race Theory and its origins. I can’t deal with it all here. It is long and informative and you may be able to find it on the internet–if it hasn’t been censored off by now. For my purposes here I will give you a brief quote. Mr. Rufo noted that: “Critical race theory is an academic discipline, formulated in the 1990s, built on the intellectual framework of identity-based Marxism. Relegated for many years to universities and obscure academic journals, over the past decade it has increasingly become the default ideology in our public institutions.”

One of those public institutions is the public school system and Critical Race Theory is, regardless of what some try to tell us, alive and unfortunately well in our public school systems in America. Continue reading

Things To Dispense With For Educational Freedom

I can recall, thinking back years ago now, that my friend and Mentor. Pastor Ennio Cugini, had talked about what needed to be done to ensure real educational freedom in this country. He mentioned two specific things I still remember. He said that you needed to get rid of compulsory attendance laws in the various states. At one point, years ago, the state of Mississippi had done that, but somewhere along the line that got changed so that Mississippi became just like the other states.

I had never heard of anyone else that advocated that except Pastor Cugini. He was ahead of his time, as he was on many other issues. It was and still is a fact that the majority of the property tax in most states goes to find the public schools. Continue reading

Benson: Who Really Founded Public Education?

The Unitarians prided themselves on their socialism decades ago. They still do. Rev. R. J. Rushdoony, author of The Messianic Character of American Education took note of the many socialist projects supported by Unitarians, and state-controlled education had to be at the top of the list.

Back in 1847 Karl Marx was hired by a group called the League of the Just (Illuminati) to write a little book called The Communist Manifesto that was to be used in the Socialist revolts in Europe in 1848. Marx’s diatribe was one of the most boring things I’ve ever read. Marx would never have qualified for the “Humorist of the year award.” Yet, as leaden as the Manifesto is, it is important to be aware of the Illuminati’s plans for first European, and eventually, world conquest.

Marx listed ten points that revolutionary cadres should use in taking over a country, any country, in which to display the glories of “scientific socialism.” The tenth point on the Illuminati’s wish list was “Free education for all children in public schools…” As horrendous as this point was, it seems the Unitarians had beaten them to it by at least a decade and a half. So the question then arises–in this instance did the Illuminati learn from the Unitarians–or had some among the Unitarians learned earlier from the Illuminati? Continue reading

Benson: Was (Is) Public Education Subversive?

Horace Mann ~ NOT my favorite ‘educator’

In his book The Nature of the American System the late Rev. R. J. Rushdoony observed, way back in 1965, that: “The ‘public school’ movement, or statist education, did not exist until the 1830s. Statist education began as a subversive movement, and its bitter, savage struggle has not yet been written. The essentials of the drive which produced statist education are clearly seen in Horace Mann (1796-1859), the ‘Father of the Common Schools.’ First and foremost, Mann was a Unitarian. New England Unitarianism was in the forefront of the battle for statist education. For Mann, Unitarianism was the true Christianity, and, with humorless zeal, he fought for his holy faith.”

So for Mann, the promotion of statist education was an integral tenet of his Unitarian faith–a faith that denied the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ and His death for believers to atone for their sins. Rev. Rushdoony quite accurately pinned down Mann’s desire for statist education (public schools). For Mann, the only real “Christianity” was his Unitarian brand. Mann’s original theological background when growing up was Calvinism, but Mann felt that Calvinism was way too harsh, and so he abandoned it and wrote his own creed as to what constituted “Christian” behavior. Therefore, Mann’s new “faith” constituted itself an apostate faith, even though the term “Christian” was used with it. Continue reading

Benson: The Rise of Homeschooling and Classical Education

Keep them at home…

I recently saw an article on “World” by Adeline A. Allen, who is an associate professor of law at Trinity Law School. She wrote about the death of classical education in most schools today, but noted that, in some instances, it is making a comeback.

Allen noted that: “As a child growing up in the 18th century in the Caribbean and by no means wealthy, Alexander Hamilton had a number of books. One of which seems to have been Plutarch’s “Lives.” Judging from Hamilton’s writings from his youth onward, Plutarch helped form the man he became. The kind of education that would have students read Plutarch has long fallen by the wayside in mainstream American schools–but thankfully, not in all schools.” Continue reading

Benson: Ahh, Those Racist Homeschoolers!

There was a good article on Liberty Nation recently about how the political left …”desperately wants to keep parents from homeschooling their children.”

The article stated that: “What happens when parents realize the public school system isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and start seeking other alternatives? Ever since the debate over the material being taught in K-12 classrooms erupted, government schools have been under well-deserved scrutiny for injecting far-left ideas regarding race, sexuality, and gender into their curricula. Now, the nation is seeing a backlash from Democrats and their comrades in the activist media with attempts to limit options for parents who have become disillusioned with their children’s learning institutions.” Continue reading

Benson: Public (government) “Education – Ongoing Reconstruction”

I received an email from a friend in the upper South just a day or so ago that was about a statue of a Confederate general that was being taken down. Since this friend doesn’t usually get involved with Southern Heritage issues, I wrote back and explained to him that the political and theological leftists would never be satisfied until all of Southern Heritage and culture was totally erased from our minds and memories.

Then he made an interesting comment. He wrote “First the South and then the country.” He understood what was going on. Indeed, “reconstruction” continues in our day. People don’t always think in those terms, even here in the South, but it’s true. Continue reading

Benson: Public School Liars And Deceivers

How often have I heard people say “If only we could get the public schools back to what they were when I was in them they’d be okay.” Folks, you are kidding yourselves if you think that. They were bad when you went to them but you just didn’t notice. Now, what was bad then looks good to you. Twenty five years from now what seems bad will look good – which shows that our thinking has been tampered with and we don’t realize it – to our detriment! Continue reading

Benson: Home Schooling Increases While Public School Enrollment Decreases

Keep them at home…

The AP seems to have had to acknowledge a fact they would rather have buried. According to The New American.com for April 19th there has been a dramatic increase in the number of home schooling families since the Covid outbreak. That planned pandemic was not, however, the only problem parents had with public schools. Continue reading

Benson: Marxism In American Education ~ Three for the Road…

Anyone who has followed my articles over the years knows that I advocate that parents, especially Christian parents, remove their children from the public school system before they lose them forever.

I recently read an article by a E. Jeffrey Ludwig on the “American Thinker” website from March of 2019. Mr. Ludwig said, in part: “Even in high school I found myself offended by my fellow students who were card-carrying communists in their beliefs and sympathies. In fact, a sizable number of students clung to Marxism as dogma. The high school was Central High School for Boys, a school for gifted boys located in Philadelphia, Pa. Later as I continued my studies in the Ivy League, I saw there was a consistently strong element of intellectuals who were not in the least bit embarrassed to express their interest in communism.” Continue reading

Benson: Parents Waking Up To Public School Indoctrination

There was an informative article in the “New American” magazine for March 28th entitled The Mass Exodus From Indoctrination to Freedom. It was written by Annalisa Pesek and dealt with a new film about families that have escaped those indoctrination centers we refer to as public schools. Continue reading