So your proposal is to replace the entire education system with the principle that children need to become adults? What is there to converse about? We're not at all talking about educational policy here, we're talking about your childhood problems - only you're confusing the subject matter.
History has been going in the exact opposite direction - we treat more and more adults as children, with extended schooling, cushy jobs removed from front-line business concerns, etc. I'm sure you've benefitted from all this. The reason that you felt that you could opt out of school is not that you were ready to be an adult, but rather because over time environments outside of school have become more school-like and conducive to ongoing mental development, as opposed to grueling hard work.
But this isn't remotely close to universally true for most people in the world or even in the US or in the western world. For many people, not having to go to school means dealing with abusive parents for longer, being forced into manual labor, being continously tempted by criminal life, drug trade and prostitution. You have a privileged background and skills that are extremely valuable in the real world - this isn't true of many people and school is their only chance. Universal education serves to stigmatize those forces that attempt to take advantage of children by enforcing the norm that children are not adults and should be in school. Is this not ideal for every single person? Of course. Is English the perfect language for everyone born in the US? For obvious reasons, real world laws and real world social norms aren't going to be perfectly nuanced and flexible to be ideal in every single possible case.
History has been going in the exact opposite direction - we treat more and more adults as children, with extended schooling, cushy jobs removed from front-line business concerns, etc. I'm sure you've benefitted from all this. The reason that you felt that you could opt out of school is not that you were ready to be an adult, but rather because over time environments outside of school have become more school-like and conducive to ongoing mental development, as opposed to grueling hard work.
But this isn't remotely close to universally true for most people in the world or even in the US or in the western world. For many people, not having to go to school means dealing with abusive parents for longer, being forced into manual labor, being continously tempted by criminal life, drug trade and prostitution. You have a privileged background and skills that are extremely valuable in the real world - this isn't true of many people and school is their only chance. Universal education serves to stigmatize those forces that attempt to take advantage of children by enforcing the norm that children are not adults and should be in school. Is this not ideal for every single person? Of course. Is English the perfect language for everyone born in the US? For obvious reasons, real world laws and real world social norms aren't going to be perfectly nuanced and flexible to be ideal in every single possible case.