The joke in "Schooling" lies in how it plays with the word "attended." We usually attend a school, a lecture, a meeting. Here the speaker attends "the outdoors," as if the woods or fields were a class worth showing up for. It's a small, quietly cheeky claim: this is where the real learning happens.
Then the institutions step in. The speaker is "referred / to a committee," and the committee's job is "to examine idling." The poem's humor is dry. Wandering around outside, paying attention, doing nothing useful, becomes a problem that needs official study. The committee turns a pleasure into a case file.
The speaker never complains, which makes the poem funnier. The tone is deadpan and a little amused, with a hint of defiance underneath. Judging by the title, the poem suggests that school can be a place, a habit of mind, or a system that distrusts anyone who learns on their own terms. The mood is light, wry, and gently mocking of that system.