For what it's worth, I was unschooled, and I scored a perfect 800 on the critical reading section of the SAT. I didn't spend nearly as much time outdoors as these kids, though; I gravitated toward computers from a young age.
My daughter is unschooled and taught herself to read and type mostly from the web browsing.
Most people somehow assume that because they learnt to read and write at school that one cannot do it out of school, and more efficiently. This despite the fact that they themselves didn't get good at reading until they found books they were excited about and wanted to read for their own reasons (reasons, btw, that might include hunting and fishing).
And if they think about it they'll correctly predict that asking adults on the street what 7 times 8 is will yield the wrong answer, or no answer at all, despite many years of compulsory arithmetic and socialization. Yet the commonly proposed solution to this deficiency is more compulsory education rather than less.
