In Memoriam: Marshall Fritz

 

Marshall Fritz, founder of the Alliance for the Separation of School & State and of Advocates for Self-Government, passed from this life on Election Day, 2008.

 

There is probably no other person who has so passionately championed the cause of independent, parent-controlled education. Marshall devoted a major portion of his life to the cause of liberty and the last fourteen years to freedom in education.

 

I’ve known Marshall for most of the last fourteen years. I interviewed him once many years ago and started a second, more personal, interview on May 1^st of this year. I never got to finish the second interview. Our intention was to complete it by e-mail over time, but it was not to be.

 

I could write all sorts of things about Marshall’s beliefs about education and the state, but that’s available at the Alliance web site.

 

Instead, I’d like to talk about some things from our second partial-interview that I think all parents will find thought-provoking and important.

 

On his personal web site, Marshall has a few pages devoted to his “bucket lists” – things he wanted to do before dying.

 

One item he mentions is the desire to write something about the only time his mother told him she loved him. She was 81-years-old and on her deathbed. She was an involved mother, but Marshall told me in our interview that his relationship with her was strained. She was strict and demanding – and had never told her children she loved them. When she finally did, it was something Marshall never forgot.

 

So, tell your children today that you love them, even if they’re grown, even if it’s hard because you’ve never done it or your relationship has been difficult.

 

Another thing Marshall mentions on his web site and that made a strong impression on him is the time his otherwise quiet and peaceful dad punched a guy in the nose when he went too far verbally abusing little newspaper-delivery-boy Marshall.

 

I don’t suggest that you do the same, but imagine how your children would feel to see you stand up to the state’s school system and symbolically punch them in the nose. Then take your children’s hands and walk away. You’ve essentially said, “These are my children and I won’t stand by submissively and watch you treat them as if they are your property.” You will garner the respect of your children and empower them to manage their own liberty as they grow older.

 

Marshall has left us a rich legacy, both in his work and in opening up to share some very personal stories.

 

I’ll miss him, as I know many of you will.

 

- Tammy Drennan, November 5, 2008

 

See also:

Tribute to Marshall Fritz
Photos of Marshall at Advocates for Self-Government
Read Marshall’s 31 book reviews on Amazon

Do You Like the World We Have?

by Tammy Drennan

 

Independence in education is not an easy choice.

 

For many parents, it takes a tragedy or a crisis to make the choice, like the lady I talked with today who just moved into a new school district and whose 13-year-old daughter was violently assaulted on the school bus her first week at her new public school.

 

If there was any message I could get across to parents it would be this: Don’t get involved with the public schools to begin with. Choose freedom from the start. Once you’re involved you and your children become vulnerable in ways you can’t imagine – until it’s too late. By that time, getting out can be very difficult, and even when you do get out, there is the heartache and damage that can take years to repair.

 

I know that some readers will find my sentiments overstated, and I understand – maybe you’ve been one of the lucky ones whose children have navigated the rough waters and come out alive. A few have probably even come out relatively whole.

 

But take a look around you. Take a look at yourself, your spouse, your relatives and friends and coworkers, your children, society.

 

The vision and firm belief of the father of modern public education, Horace Mann, was a society of peace-loving, hard-working, moral, socially and psychologically healthy, loyal citizens. He believed that public schools were the only way to reach this lofty goal.

 

Not only have public schools, in their 160+ year history, not delivered on this promise, they have delivered quite the opposite. They themselves have become places of violence and fear, of cheating and slacking off, of immorality and conflict. And they spill out hoards of children thus conditioned, year after year after year, into the byways and highways of America – ripe and ready for our forces of police, prisons, psychiatrists and therapists, social workers and social programs.

 

So I return to my plea: Dear Parents, Please take a look around. Don’t you want something better for your children? Something more excellent? A bright future instead of a dysfunctional one? Happiness and contentment instead of a lifetime of therapy and medication?

 

No matter how hard it is to do it, you’re the only ones who can. The power is all yours, if you’re willing to take it. Once you give away your responsibility and power, all the demanding and whining and complaining in the world will not force the new owner to exercise it as you wish. It is out of your hands.

 

There is only one solution – take back your power, take back your children, do the tough thing. The more of us who do it, the greater will be the forces and resources that will back us up. The greater will be the reward. The better will be the future.

 

Even Our Rebellion Is Compliant

by Tammy Drennan

 

I’d like to share a few random thoughts drawn from my 23 years of homeschooling, tutoring, teaching classes and workshops, teaching adult literacy, helping thousands of parents start homeschooling and working for freedom in education.

 

1. First there’s the obvious. Motivated people learn best.

 

2. People who do most of their study on their own learn better than those who depend on teachers. By study on their own, I mean seeking out the best sources of knowledge regarding the topic at hand and finding the best way to make it their own; for some that could be a classroom situation only, but not for many.

 

3. Testing may be a motivating factor for getting a good grade but it’s a truly lousy motivator for learning to understand – and learning to understand is what results in education.

 

4. People don’t learn very well unless they interact with what they’re studying. Children usually interact by talking and/or by acting out things they’re learning. Talking and play-acting are not only discouraged in most schools – they’re practically outlawed. Adults also interact by talking but also by underlining, jotting notes and lingering over ideas for as long as it takes to grasp them.

 

5. People don’t tend to retain things they’re not interested in or things they don’t need to know. When the same person who couldn’t grasp a concept at age 16 finds he needs that concept at age 18, his ability to grasp it rises to the occasion.

 

6. Government schooling has defined education down to the point of having handicapped generations of adults, including many of the ones leading the charge for independence today. Our hope is in reversing the process – educating our children in better ways than we were educated, then hoping they will find better ways yet, and so on, until we have repaired the damage and are moving forward again.

 

7. Educators have a lot of trouble distinguishing between trivia and knowledge. Facts devoid of substantial context are fairly pointless. Nearly everyone knows George Washington was our first president, and nearly no one knows the impact he had on the political shape our country took and how it still informs the presidency to this day – and has the potential to inform it even more.

 

8. Way, way too many subjects are drawn out over years of schooling when it would be far better to introduce them incidentally or by way of stories in younger “grades” and teach them in earnest in one fell swoop when a student gains the maturity and need to actually grasp them. The finer points of grammar, for instance – kindergarteners are being bombarded with definitions of nouns, verbs and adjectives, yet seniors cannot write coherent letters.

 

What Now?

 

I could go on – I could lament the dumbing down of phonics programs, the vapidity of most language arts programs, the lack of a mature approach to history once students reach their teenage years, but my point is not to be morose – it’s to be honest and to challenge myself and others to find better definitions of education and better ways to do it.

 

It is not enough to simply break free of public school authority. We must break free of all its definitions. It has defined education and thus has defined us. It has defined education and thus has defined liberty. It has defined education and thus has defined nearly everything we do and everything we are – usually in ways so subtle we don’t even know it. It has even defined our religion, no matter how much we may deny it.

 

We can pretend all we like that by trying to reform the schools we are helping the poorest the most, but it’s a lie. We’re helping them the least. We are condemning them to an eternal slave mentality, to forever having their entire lives defined by the state.

 

But maybe we need to find ourselves before we can help others break free. Maybe we condemn them to state schools because we’ve learned to fear freedom and to trust government. That was the plan, of course – not free people but compliant people. Even our rebellion is compliant.

 

We can do better. But I believe we must become more determined and more wise. The freedom movement is good, but to a large degree, the horse is running before the cart.

 

It’s time for committed people to begin gathering – two, three, ten, a hundred at a time – to hash out the meaning and means of education. Then it’s time for like-minded souls to join ranks and create opportunities based on their best, most informed, most carefully and honestly considered understanding, so their will be true choices for all children.

 

Why not call a friend or two today and invite them to begin a serious investigation into the meaning of education? Feel free to print and use anything from this blog that might prove useful to you.

 

And please, any time you find a valuable resource or idea that contributes to a better understanding of what is meant by education and how it can happen, let me know.

Tribute to Marshall Fritz

Note: Marshall Fritz passed away Nov. 4, 2008
See: In Memoriam: Marshall Fritz, 1943-2008

by Tammy Drennan

As many of you may know by now, Marshall Fritz, founder of the Alliance for the Separation of School & State, has inoperable pancreatic cancer and has been offered the medical opinion that he has 6-20 months to live. We expect more of him than that, of course.

I’ve known Marshall for about ten or eleven years and have volunteered with and worked for the Alliance in a number of capacities over those years, thus my boldness in posting a tribute to this special man.

Founding the Alliance is just one of Marshall’s long list of accomplishments. His résumé also encompasses starting a private school, founding Advocates for Self-Government, planning and executing two national education conferences, and encouraging and inspiring hundreds (maybe thousands?) of individuals to contribute their special talents to the cause of liberty.

This last item is the one I want to focus on. Marshall has garnered the admiration and gratitude of people from almost every walk of life and from countries around the world. Reading over some of the responses to the e-vite to his gala in June, I’ve been amazed to see comments from friends in South Africa, the Philippines; Virginia, Alaska and many states in-between. There have been comments from other leaders in the field of liberty preservation, from priests and politicians, and from every day Joes and Janes.

It’s easy to think that Marshall has an ego to match his booming voice, but then you encounter one person after another he’s encouraged, one thing after another he’s done that you hadn’t known about. There’s a humble side to him, too. :-)

My own experience with Marshall is that he energizes you. He makes you feel as if you, too, can do big and daring things — and not only that you can, but that you must. He imbues you with the sense of getting into the fight for the long-haul — committing yourself to the cause of freedom.

Yet for all this bigness, there’s the regular guy Marshall, too. We all know some food he loves. We know he loves his children and grandchildren. We know his penchant for numbers and versions and quirky titles for new programs and ideas. We know he has two million close friends and advisors. We know his attachment to long, drawn-out analogies.

For all his travels and associations in high places, Marshall has always leant me an attentive ear, has always taken my ideas as seriously as the next guy’s or gal’s. He’s quick to agree when he sees the value in an idea and willing to go the distance in debating it if he fails to see its value.

Now, we all know Marshall isn’t perfect, but a tribute is no place to start picking on a person’s flaws. And here I might add that, in my experience, Marshall has been exceedingly gracious in refraining from mentioning the flaws of others. He readily acknowledges that we’re all walking the same path of imperfection.

So, I want to say, Thank you, Marshall. Thank you from me personally and on behalf of a world that is better for the life you’ve lived.

May God grant you many more years among us, but if he chooses to take you home, you will have left behind an enthusiastic and confident army to carry on your work.

God be with you.

Read comments in the guest book on the web site Marshall is building.