You mean, LISP doesn't force you to look at your data as lists?

I don't think it's relevant that Java uses objects, or that LISP uses lists. Or that C just scribbles all over your memory. Those are details. A balanced tree is still a balanced tree, regardless whether you implement your nodes or your keys as objects, lists, SVs or memory locations.

A teaching language should be simple, so you don't have to spend your time on syntax details. But whether the working horse of a language is objects or lists or something else is, IMO, not relevant.

BTW, the best language to explain algorithms and datastructures are drawings.