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Chapter 4 61 4.5 T RUST The educational discourse of risk to which Smeyers and Biesta (and others) object generally does not recognise the existence and significance of existential risks. Such existential risks render human beings, and specifically parents in this case, vulnerable. As such, an emphasis on risk-avoidance seems to minimize the place for/of vulnerability in an educational context. According to Annette Baier, the acceptance of this vulnerability is what we mean by trust. 45 Thus, we argue that a discourse of risk in fact minimizes the significance of trust in child- rearing. The emphasis is on the avoidance of risk, and the less risk (the less uncertainty) there is left – and thus the less trust there is necessary – the better. The use of such a discourse in matters of education does not promote the trust parents have in their children or themselves, nor does it promote a general trust – a kind of faith – that ‘things will be all right’ with the world and the people in it. The impression one gets is that ‘having’ to trust one’s children is something one resorts to by lack of a better alternative, namely eliminating the risk and emphasizing knowing what one should do to do ‘it’ right. It appears as if this discourse advocates that there should be no need to trust one’s children. This is, to our minds, harmful to the parent-child relationship, because this would presume that we live in a dystopian world where freedom is absent for children. We want to argue that a conception of risk in education as an inevitable Wagnis actually points to the opposite, namely to an affirmation of the importance of trust in child-rearing, because parents cannot avoid all risks. Above that, there are good reasons for parents to have trust in their children, and, as we will show, it seems that parents generally start from trust in the relationship with their children. For Bollnow, the importance of trust is self-evident. In a different book he writes that human life is only possible on the basis of trust. Distrust on the other hand causes life to ‘dry out’ and eventually ‘die out’. 46 Trust is the ‘indispensable precondition of all human life’. 47 And in a third book he writes that trust is one of the key virtues for educators. 48 We will first make some general remarks on the concept of trust before we can discuss what kind of trust characterises the parent- child relationship. Spiecker argues that in general, we can say that ‘if X trusts Y, then X is convinced that Y (person or thing) possesses certain qualities’. 49 He gives two further logical conditions of trust: if X 45 Baier 1986. 46 “ Nur auf dem Boden eines Vertrauens ist Leben überhaupt möglich. Mißtrauen umgekehrt läßt das Leben vertrocknen und schließlich ganz ersterben” , Bollnow 1958, p. 175. 47 Das Vertrauen ist die unerläßliche Voraussetzung alles menschlichen Lebens , idem. 48 Bollnow 1965, pp. 52-62. 49 Spiecker 1990, p. 158.