I keep hearing the word trust. People keep telling me that unschooling requires an enormous amount of trust and faith. I don't know about that. This, from xanga, can be said of my response to my years in school, "You see that girl, she seems so invincible, right? But just touch her and she'll flinch. She has secrets and she trusts no one. She's the perfect example of betrayal. Because everyone she trusted, broke her." So it is true that my criticisms of traditional school arise from profound distrust. But the corollary, that I unschool because I trust my children, is not strictly correct.

Here is a chilling and difficult truth. If any stranger yanked my children up by the scruff of their muddy chigger bitten little necks and plopped them down in any school, my kids would be fine. Shall I define fine? My kids might feel traumatised by the initial shock. However I expect that my kids would test to the average score, with normal variations of strengths and weakness. My kids would integrate in a socially seamless way. My kids would be scrappy and capable. My kids would not be behind the children sitting next to them in any remarkable way.

Now think about that. My kids have never been to school. My kids have never been tested. My kids have never been taught by traditional methods and teachers. Thus, you may point out all of my conjecture here. True enough. Except that I am speaking, not as a person trying to win an argument, but as a deeply caring parent. I am speaking from the truth of my children's best interest and not from a need to prove that homeschool works. And I am reporting my deepest assessment of the children.

So if we look with a profound concern for the well being of the children, and we look at all the differing facets that are required to navigate The Old School System, we can plop my children right down there. And they would, at the least, be completely average socially and academically. Now what does that say for all the children who have been sitting in school all those years? Can we say their time in school was necessary? For their parents, perhaps. Was their time in school beneficial? How can you say so, if two children can waltz in off the unschooled street as their equal? More than extolling my children as unique or special, this reveals the old system to be superfluous.

It can be said that I unschool because I have a profound distrust of institutional school. It is not that I trust my children to learn everything they need to know all by themselves. I have observed that human beings will consistently strive to serve their own best interest. Humans live to manipulate their environment and make themselves comfortable. My kids are as human as any. I don't need to trust that, it is a fact. We breath and we move and we learn. This truth is the undoing of the traditional school model. But notice that we are together breathing, moving, and learning. More than trusting, I am guiding the children.

I trust my children to behave in all ways as children have behaved since children began to play upon this earth. I trust that my children, if abandoned to a school system, would act just like all the others. School nurtures some of the smallest and ugliest qualities in children, and I trust my children would be affected no differently than any of the others.

What do my children have, as unschoolers, that schooled children lack? My children have freedom. They have an enormous amount of time. Their lives are virtually stress free. My children are under the impression that learning is supposed to be fun. And if learning is not fun it is patently and obviously and directly necessary, a means to a desired end. Stanford now recruits homeschooled students on the grounds that they have shown consistent "academic vitality and self motivation." Indeed, and this doesn't come from blind faith that children will study hard. This vitality comes from never having been bludgeoned with academia.

What do my children lack? They lack that skulking avoidance that kids acquire in school. They have no resistance to the idea of specific subjects such as "math." My kids have not learned that one can evade adults effectively by fading into the crowd. In short, my children lack unresponsiveness. This is an intended byproduct of unschooling. It is a plan. It is no accident. And trust doesn't really enter into this unschooling equation.

I don't trust my children so much as I parent them. I trust myself as an excellent parent. I would never abandon my children completely to their own devices. Just as I have no plans to entrust an anonymous institution with my children, I have no plans to entrust the children with free reign. I do not offer unlimited tv and lollipops, and then walk away tossing the instructions to "evolve" over my shoulder. The children trust me. If at all possible, I intend that they shall grow up with the expectation that adults are trustworthy and helpful, that education is almost a byproduct of an exuberant life, and that learning and living are joyous artistic soulful endeavors. I trust this is not a common curricula for most students.

"The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action." ~ Frank Herbert

"Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do." ~ Dr. Spock