Compulsory education that assumes each kid is a uniform widget to be produced is a terrible way to develop people. People think so little of children and their capacity to learn, engage, and understand that they compel them to spend some of the most dynamic years of their life learning about things they don’t care about that they promptly forget in adulthood. Kids are natural learning machines and we murder that natural curiosity and capacity for mastery through school.

I think there are better ways. We cannot, for example, teach kids about democracy in environments that give kids often less agency than prisoners in prisons. Democratic schools like Summerhill, Sudbury or unschooling are good starts. Kids at those schools have control over their schedule: if they want to keep a more structured schedule, they can, if they want a more relaxed schedule, sure. Each kid also has a vote in how the school is run, including in a judicial system for administering discipline.

At the very minimum, ending age segregation policies at schools would be a good start for more dynamic learning.