Sandra Dodd wrote in a discussion some years ago (2011, to be more precise):

"When a family doesn't consider learning the primary goal of unschooling, things can disintegrate pretty quickly. YES, once you get it going kids are learning all the time. But if a family starts with the idea that learning is happening all the time, they might never quite get the learning part of unschooling going. And in that case learning will NOT happen all the time. It's subtle but crucial."

Pam Sorooshian added:

"Some kind of learning is happening all the time - but not all learning is good. Learning how to sneak food, learning that parents can't be trusted and counted on, learning to think of oneself in negative ways, all sad. Learning that life is boring, hard work, sucks, hurts, is unfair, also sad. Not what unschoolers are trying for.

Human brains are voracious and will feed on whatever is available - unschoolers should be offering interesting experiences, ideas, stimulation, music, logic, conversation, images, movement, discovery, beauty, etc. Brain food in abundance. It requires effort. It requires attention to qualitative and quantitative aspects of learning. Depth and breadth—creating a lifestyle in which kids are offered the opportunity to learn a lot about some things and a little about a lot of things."

The quotes above are in this topic: Helping little ones navigate social norms (click "show message history")
and the first one was pulled out to being a new topic here: Learning All the Time

[Holly] said "Okay, but I don't know what 'tertiary' means." I held up two fingers and said "Marty's secondary." Then I added another finger and said "You're tertiary."

I'm sure I had to write out the definition and use it in a full sentence, in 8th or 9th grade, so I have cursive writing and my kids don't because I spent many years writing and writing and writing in school, but my kids have the vocabulary with NONE of that writing, which is honestly pretty remarkable.

Clarification and context... Marty had been invited to a party; Holly was possibly going and possibly not, but only if Marty wanted her to.

I'm amazed at how easily some things are learned. My five year old is learning to read. He was playing a computer game that had him putting together words to make compound words (sand + box gives you sandbox, etc.). He wasn't sure of a word, so I told him what it was and explained about how words ending in "e" work. Pointed out one or two more examples as they came out and presto! He understands Silent E.

Then I stood there not sure what to do. That's it? That was all it took to learn about Silent E?? But, but...it was a huge deal when I learned to read in school! There were many lessons. Drills. That song on the Electric Company. How could all of that fuss have been needed for something that took Mikey about 30 seconds to grasp? Ah, the wonders of learning something when you are ready and not before!

--aj (mamaaj2000)

Joyce Fetteroll, November 2010
read the rest of that *here*.