I am not too sure but there I beleive the Montessori Elementary school model is based on the very model you are talking about. Plus there are other private schools that exist on a similar vein and organizations for people who give homeschooling to their kids with similar ideas.

I am not too sure though if we should abandon the model of the sacred Chao, a whirling disk of eristic and aneristic. Some people have a will to freedom, some have a will to be sheep in a hierarchy or at a top in a hierarchy. For better or worse, both worlds co-exist. Creating an education system to create individualistic free thinking kids to a society based on such is probably not going to work for the kids who want structure and who as adults will want the same.

Perhaps the mark of ultimate freedom is to give people the freedom to give up their freedom if they want to. Some people always will, that's what only the most sophisticated anarchists understand, that anarchy is now and has always been. That people choose bondage because it's what they want, because they don't want responsibility or the inconvenience of having to think for themselves, or risk.

Children aren't exempt from having a will of their own. They aren't merely impressionable creatures that have a malleable will who can be influenced to choose freedom over bondage.

A healthy society or school offers both options. Children who have a desire to freedom and self motivation should and probably do have the option to pursue their independent study projects. Children that have a will towards desiring structure, even acting out antisocially if they don't have structure as a result of anxiety from feeling alienated without boundries firmly drawn around them at all times, well... the system should accomodate their needs too.

Both halfs of the chao, in ballence, dynamicly whirling.

Note that discrepencies in school districts and the politics of money do limit lower income towns' schooling to offer less options to students. They may perhaps have a small "gifted and talented" program that is underfunded where only the smallest grouping of kids with a self motivated will towards freedom will be able to get the academic support and nurturing that they need.

The affluent district I graduated High School from had every option available, want to be a number, do your work, graduate just doing what you are told.... done. You want to devise your own study program... they made it easy to do it if you wanted to, could practically make your own cirriculum and work it out with your teacher. But they had a lot of financial resources and their class sizes were pretty damn small, the teachers were not very stressed out and had a lot of assistance at their disposal.