Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
That said, I tend to think rather strongly that there are some foundation skills that don't seem all that useful in and of themselves, and which few children are intrinsically motivated to master... but which make higher learning later pretty easy by comparison with those who DID NOT master them.

Could you elaborate on what skills you mean? I *want* to be an unschooler, but I do "push" (as in "require DS to work on") reading, math and Japanese (his father's language). I think that other things like history or art and so on can be more unschooled rather than the basics. But our core group of friends are primarily unschoolers, so I always feel like such a brute.