Concept of school: what constitutes "school"?

In the U.S., homeschooling is pretty accepted as the alternative way to educate kids, and a report says that 3-5 % of kids in the U.S. are currently homeschooled. The percentage comes out that there is one homeschooling kid in a class of 30 students.

I actually got to interview 4 students in my college who have homeschooled in their life, and gather their voices of experiences and ideas about homeschooling. They have very different backgrounds of taking homeschool education in terms of their period they were homeschooled, their teachers and the subjects they learned. For example, the homeschooling period is diverse from 4 years to 12 years. The teachers are mostly their parents, but one student said that community teachers came to the house to teach. They learned various subjects including reading, writing, literature, math, science, chemistry, history, art, Bible studies and so on.

I introduce some provoking quotes from the interviewees.

  (Interviewee A): “I enjoyed the fact that I got to learn things in a way that worked for me.  My parents and grandparents got to know how I learned and would focus their attention on ways of teaching that were specific to my needs.”

(B): “When I was back in public school, I was so bored and frustrated with all the in between time when I could have been learning.”

(C): "I liked not having to go to school every day, sleeping in, getting to spend time learning about things I was interested in, and not having tons of homework." “Sometimes I felt like I didn't have many friends, and I worried about not being prepared for college.”

(D): "Homeschooling was being able to do my work from the comfort of my own room. I also liked not having to deal with the sometimes toxic culture of public education." "I sometimes felt isolated from others my own age, who went to public schools, and how unprepared it made me for more structured education systems once I entered college. It was a bit of a culture shock going from homeschooling to university."

 These quote really highlight the difference from the conventional schooling system in that homeschooling has more self-directed aspect. They all liked the way they learn and their teachers teach, and in this sense homeschooling is "customized" education based on their needs and preference. On the other hand, some of the interviewees revealed their worry and feeling of isolation from kids' community in school. Their saying here implies that school is really unique place sharing rules and culture, and the competence living in the rules and culture is highly valued to also live in the actual society. Homeschooling can be also considered to be "school," but distinctive from the conventional school in that homeschooling does not teach kids in the same way the conventional school does.

So coming back to the initial questions: "What is the concept of school and what constitutes 'school,'"? the findings from the whole research show that "school" is not just the (physical) place to learn something, but also the concept of how we study and learn. This is because "school" has the function to give kids "pre-social" experiences, such as knowing what the actual society looks like, before they work in the actual society. School as the concept consists of container (physical place), time and content, and people in school share all three elements together. In this sense school can be "social space," and I would say that students "live" in school rather than study in school.