A message I posted in one of the unschooling folders on AOL:

Subject: some unschooling thoughts
Date: Tue, Jan 6, 1998 6:33 PM

I had a few thoughts today... (quit laughing, Lori!)

I was thinking about how people learn languages. I think most people would agree that the best way to learn a language is immersion. To live somewhere that the language is spoken, so you are surrounded by it, and you pick it up through context, because you need to know it, and by using it. That lessons may or may not be helpful, but on their own, they're nowhere near as effective as immersion is.

Then I was thinking about how our kids learn *everything* that same way. That we speak math here, we speak science here. We speak the "language of learning" at our house. So the kids pick it all up through context, needing to know, and using it themselves.

What I was realizing is that this is, I believe, part of why unschooling works as well as it does, and why some people seem not to be able to understand the concept. I know of homes where the "language of learning", especially math and science, are definitely *not* spoken. People who do not live lives filled with learning *can't* see how kids could learn by living. It would be like telling them that my kids will learn Mandarin just by living in my house, without anyone ever being here who speaks it. It makes no sense.

So I'm wondering why it is that some homes speak the "language of learning" and some do not. And I wonder if homes where they do "school at home", with lessons the primary mode of learning, speak this language less, or if there wouldn't be a noticeable difference between a "school at home" home, and an unschooling home.

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