I argue that just because learning does not require traditional social interaction (I agree with you here), that doen't mean it's not social. I would be interested for somebody to come up with a case for learning not being social, but I felt that your examples here very much fell in the realm of still learning in the context of society, and therefore social. (See some of my previous arguments.)

Did you know that actually, homeschooling does NOT have a place in some major schooling systems? In Germany, homeschooling is illegal. It always seemed rather unfair that the broadcast American radio in the Frankfurt area regularly advertizes homeschooling and German listeners don't have the option. (The radio station is meant to serve the Americans, so they aren't planning their ads based on the German audience.)

Here's an interesting article on Germans trying for asylum in the US.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-denies-asylum-home-schooling-german-family/story?id=19189260

Even Brazil has a lot going on that makes it difficult to homeschool. It seems to be moving in a "better" direction (assuming homeschooling is something you support).

A statistic:

"[I]n the USA an estimated 2.04 million children are educated at home, the most homeschooled population ever informed. Between 1999 and 2010, it more than doubled, now representing 3.8% of the school age population of the country. Recently, this practice, initially dominated by Christian families from the rural south region of the United States, has conquered new groups of supporters, extending to all sections of the population."

http://thebrazilbusiness.com/article/homeschooling-in-brazil

I think you might have answered your own question here. We learn how it is appropriately acceptable to excrete our waste, but no we don't "learn" to poop. But you said yourself "instincts aren't learned" so maybe that's the same as saying "instincts aren't LEARNING", or at the very least there is a social element to learning how to use our instincts. Much as I am loathe to quote Wikipedia, I happen to like part of their definition of instinct. "Any behavior is instinctive if it is performed without being based upon prior experience (that is, in the absence of learning), and is therefore an expression of innate biological factors." Just a thought, which I'd be open to having others argue differently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instinct

Interesting that you bring up students using resources at home that support social learning. Do they really? I watch students use the internet to do research, and I see them unable to touch type, unable to do keyword searches, and uninterested in applying their resources to quality social learning. Ok, that was an extreme statement, and it's obviously too broad. However, I often hear students talk about wanting to be able to use Facebook for school, but those who do manage to use it for some group projects or to communicate about school tend not to actually use it in any way that makes it truly "support social learning". In my experience, they use it like email. They aren't creating a big board of posts and information that others can latch onto and really learn from. I feel that our jobs as educators would be far easier if they actually WERE doing revolutionary things at home that we could bring into the classroom. I would love to hear examples you have of students actually using such resources at home MORE effectively than the way it's already supported in the classroom either through pen and paper or through existing classroom technology. I don't think we should knock the power of using old fashioned tools when they are still appropriate.

A well researched argument. I was going to bring up an idea of "levels of social". Can one say that learning "individually" is less social than "learning in a group", or are they just an entirely different sort of social learning? Is there a Richter scale for learning? I will answer your final question and say that no, I do not believe all academic learning and discovery require collaboration. (I'm leaving out the "and social interactions" because I think we haven't defined social well enough for me to include it in my statement.) I'm picturing the academic pouring through articles trying to make new connections for himself. Unless we start to define collaboration as including the sharing of ideas through published articles, even if there is no tacit agreement to collaboration. Would you include this in a definition of collaboration?

I have a lot of experience with homeschooling. Not personally, but through my life growing up in a relatively conservative church. (Conservative theologically, not necessarily socially.) I also with some frequency meet parents who home school. Something that is interesting is that I have NEVER had an experience where any of the homeschoolers I have met have been isolated or learned in a non-social atmosphere. Growing up, all my home-schooled friends either went to home-schooling "schools" to get help in subjects like Math or Languages that their parents felt incapable of teaching, or they went to actual public schools for band and music lessons (I went and saw one of the kids from this family play Carnegie Hall a few years back). My church in Nashville right now just rented out space to a home-schooling "school". It would appear that there is a law in the area that requires homeschoolers to meet certain requirements and these schools have become essential to many home-schooling families. The "school" paid to renovate space and everything. I do know a friend in New Hampshire who found herself doing intensive tutoring for a friend's home-schooled child. They had decided to do home-schooling by correspondence. The problem here was that the parents had decided not to take an active role in guiding their daughter through the correspondence courses, and had found she hadn't done any of the work at all! But when she was doing the work, either it was social because of interaction with her family, or it was social via my argument about feedback. Even two of my colleagues in Brasilia did high school from Brasilia through the US twenty or more years ago, and they didn't get feedback for months, but they would talk to each other and learn from one another as they did their separate work. In some ways, one could argue that a good home school could be more social than a traditional school because of the ultimately social setting in which it is set. I suppose that's a lot of anecdotes. It is worth mentioning that, although I do believe home-schooling is very social, I wouldn't chose it for my own children because it is not the social that I'd be looking for. Even with the group gatherings I have been speaking about, they tend to be a more homogenous group and there's less exposure to adjusting to the wider world of different types of people.

This is a great argument for why learning SHOULD be social, and well-supported. However, in your argument you mention a support for MORE social learning, which would indicate that there is still UN-social learning. Can you clarify?

I think that when exploring the question of whether all learning is ultimately social, a useful way to approach the debate is by identifying instances when people might argue the learning ISN'T social. In my previous post, I mentioned the idea of all learning being social in context. That covers a lot of ground. I am not so egotistical as to believe that all entrants into this debate will agree with that theory, and therefore I would like to offer another example of how traditionally non-social learning is, deep down, a social experience. The method of learning that immediately leapt to mind as not social was rote memorization. Certainly this method of learning can be MADE to be social through memorization games and classroom activities. However, it can also seem very UN-social when a student spends hours at home memorizing lists of irregular verbs or the atomic weights of various elements. I would like to argue that the element of FEEDBACK is what makes even these experiences social. Whether that feedback comes from a result on a test or from checking your answers against those in the back of the book, or even from catching a mistake as you go through memorizing a list, there is an interaction that provides a social element to the learning, even if that interaction is a personal interaction with your thought process or with an inanimate object.

While memorization, or rote learning, get's a bad rap, it is important to remember that while memorization is not Higher Order Thinking, it can be a useful step in building the knowledge that lies at the base of the Bloom's Taxonomy pyramid. Seeing this step as a part of the whole learning process puts this step in part of a social learning process.

Even Alan Shepherd saw the use of rote learning in certain circumstances.

"I woke up an hour before I was supposed to, and started going over the mental checklist: where do I go from here, what do I do? I don't remember eating anything at all, just going through the physical, getting into the suit. We practiced that so much, it was all rote." - Alan Shepard

Rote Quotes. (n.d.). BrainyQuote. Retrieved May 13, 2014, from http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/rote.html

All learning is ultimately social because it takes place in the context of society. What I mean by this is that, whether you are working on a group project or taking a test in isolation, whether you are sitting in a classroom or studying by correspondence, you are being educated through the social construct of the educational system. When thinking outside of organized learning, the same still holds true. As we learn to speak, eat, display manners, practice religion, or whatever it is we learn in daily life, we learn it by example or through direct instruction to meet the expectations of society (or to subvert or convert the expectations of society, if that is wanted). Thus, even when learning may not be immediately identified as "social", it is, ultimately, social in context.

Social Constructivism, as a theory, covers this concept well. A good overview of Social Constructivism as a support to the theory that all learning is social can be found in Steve Wheeler's Blog post entitled "Is all learning social?" http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2013/02/is-all-learning-social.html

As I write this argument, I can see people saying "But what about a person who is raised by wolves or for some other reason doesn't grow up in society?" I believe that a case can be made that even the learning in these rare and isolated (haha) cases is social. Is it not possible to have a society of 1? Dictionary.com offers one definition of society as "a body of individuals living as members of a community" but also as "the totality of social relationships among organized groups of human beings or animals". Doesn't a person living in isolation still create an organized way of living? Does that person not have society just because they are being denied contact with other humans? I would say not. As an avid reader, I have enjoyed Jean M. Auel's "Earth's Children" series (more commonly known as the Clan of the Cave Bear series). In the second book, Ayla spends the majority of her time living in isolation in a valley, with a horse and a cave lion as her only companions. She creates a clear society with language, routines, and more. She has had the experience of society earlier in her life, so she does have a guide to follow, but she does not adhere strictly to the society from which she comes and she does not require others to form this society.

Wheeler, S. (2013, February 19). Learning with 'e's: Is all learning social?. Learning with 'e's: Is all learning social?. Retrieved May 13, 2014, from http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2013/02/is-all-learning-social.html

Auel, J. M. (1982). The valley of horses: a novel. New York: Crown.