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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> While I most certainly see your point about dogmatism and government
> schools, I think unschooling requires a deliberate leap of faith.

This is quite true and is paramount to the discussion.

But it's not a faith made from whole cloth, as it is generally viewed by the 
shcoolers, like a belief in flying saucers or the abminable snowman.  It is a 
faith to overcome a cultural conditioning and return the human being to their 
default state.

None the less, faith it is.  Let me give you a parable to illustrate:

When I was much younger, most people assumed that health was a default state. 
 It was what you could reasonably expect if nothing was constitutionally 
wrong with you.  Taking medicine was rare.  

Now of days I know very few people, and almost no one my age, who isn't 
taking half a dozen very invasive drugs for this or that or nothing but 
imagined 
ills.  People no longer view their bodies as self-regulating, self-healing 
but 
rather as something that must be fine tuned with chemicals or else ill health 
is unavoidable.  We took the entire brood of children for checkups two days 
ago 
and when the nurse asked us to list the medicines the children were taking,  
she stared and blinked when we said "none".  What medicinces are they 
allergic 
to?  Don't have a clue, they've never had any.  Same when I went for a dental 
checkup.  What drugs are you on?  None.  The dental assistant quizzed me for 
five minutes thinking I surely didn't understand the question.  EVERYONE 
takes 
drugs for something.

Like that the schooler views a child as 'tabula rasa', a blank slate that 
will go no where and do nothing if it is not poked and prodded to do so.  The 
unschooler believes in the inate predisposition in all human beings to learn. 
 
Fish swim, birds fly, children learn.  It's what they do as naturally as 
breathing ..... IF the process is not thwarted and interfered with.

Many a parent of a two year old I've seen sweating the "nose ... point to 
your nose ... eyes .... now point to your eyes ...." and if the toddler 
doesn't 
respond, they are in despair.   What do they think?  Do they really think the 
child will get to be 25 an not know what the eye is called if they don't 
drill 
that at two?  I can see it now, "I'm Dr. Zilch, your ophthalmologist, and I'm 
going to examine your .... eh ... your ... things you see with there ..... 
dang, I wish my parents had played that game with me when I was two."

Schooling sets up an expectation in the child's psyche.  Reading?  Oh, that's 
what you will learn at school.  Many a child secretly wonders then, 'What if 
I can't do it, what if the first grade comes and goes and I haven't learned 
it.'  But the time of shcool attendance, the myth and mystique of the teacher 
professionally pouring reading down a hole in the child's head has taken hold 
and the natrual predisposition to easy leaning has been thwarted, most often 
forever.

Unschooling puts the child in an atmosphere of "Reading?  Oh, you'll pick 
that up when you need it or want it.  Don't sweat it."  And they do.   As 
long as 
the process is not blocked or thwarted, it always happens.

True, the siren song of government shcools wears down some parents and the 
schooling conditioned panic sets in and they, well, lose faith and give in to 
the Devil.

You hear the old saw that some children are different and need "structure" 
and other such garbage.  Children aren't all that different, but the 
brainwashing, condidtioning, and prejudice at play with children and their 
parents IS 
vastly different.  What passes for  very different needs for children most 
often 
comes down to how much they have already been schooled (brainwashed).