Unfortunately, telling what unschooling isn't doesn't tell what it is. Where unschoolers differ from other homeschoolers is the extent to which we let children be responsible for their own education. Unschoolers believe that the natural curiosity of a healthy child, given access to a rich environment, will lead the child to learn what he or she needs to know. When learning comes about as a result of the child's desires, it is absorbed easily, enthusiastically, openly. The child works harder because he is doing what he thinks is important, rather than what someone else has told him is important.
New knowledge starts with a context because it fits in with things the child already cares about.
Learning driven by real desire is so much more efficient than passive absorption that unschoolers can tolerate much more exploration, dabbling, dawdling and play than can curriculum- inflictors. The unschooling literature abounds with stories of children who paid no attention to math or reading for their first ten years and then caught up in just a few weeks. When learning is imposed from without, there are many deleterious effects. When you force a topic, you short-circuit precisely the volitional parts of the mind that are critical to real learning. You may produce memorization, but cannot effect understanding.