Except that's the opposite of the inference I made. My reasoning is, "If I'm an exception, then other people might be too, so the system broadly should be less uniform."
Whereas you seem to be defending a system that focuses, above all else, on uniformity.
The system isn't designed to maximize your personal well-being.
That would imply the system gives a damn about well-being of anyone, whatsoever, at all, so it's pretty obviously wrong.
By that standard, you're an exception that the system successfully accommodated. So what's the problem? I'm also going to guess that you've taken advantage of help from tons of people that the system has successfully placed around you to help you. I may not have needed high school education, but it's quite unlikely that I haven't benefited dramatically from a system that gives everyone high school education.
At some point, you have to stop whining from a personal sense of being wronged and start asking how you can help.
By that standard, you're an exception that the system successfully accommodated.
No, I'm an exception who the system made miserable, at extra cost and burden to itself, for 10 years until its rules finally allowed me to leave.
I spent an actual post elsewhere specifically making suggestions for what I think would make a better system for everyone, not just myself.
It starts with:
1) Let people make choices for themselves.
2) Hit them with the natural consequences of their own choices as soon as possible. Don't make any effort to delay consequences; instead, hasten them.
2a) It's ok to soften the consequences for children when they make a mistake. What psychological studies show is that sure and consistent consequences are better at training behavior than more extreme consequences that arrive unsurely and inconsistently.
3) Actually attempt to reason with people, including children. Children are foolish, but not stupid. The more you reason with them, the more they learn to use reason with people. The less you reason them, the more they learn to manipulate and exploit people.
4) Make sure your kids know what the adult world really is. They don't have to like it, since most adults don't, and knowing that it sucks earlier on will help them develop the moral fiber to fix it.
5) Teach your kids ("your" referring to any parent or teacher or adult in general) useful stuff that will help them when they become adults.
This isn't even remotely coherent from a policy perspective. You couldn't even handle schooling as a child because somehow you weren't handled in some special way and couldn't do what you wanted to do, but now you think somehow all parents must act in a specific way that you prescribe? What if they refuse? Why should they follow any of this? Maybe they are all special too? So your "system" is hoping that parents follow some random set of rules that you came up with, having, let me guess, zero parenting experience? Do you really feel that behind all this lies your incredible concern for the world's children?
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.
Whereas you seem to be defending a system that focuses, above all else, on uniformity.
The system isn't designed to maximize your personal well-being.
That would imply the system gives a damn about well-being of anyone, whatsoever, at all, so it's pretty obviously wrong.