Milton, I love your ideas--you are spot on. Thank you for your insightful article.
I would only add one more "edge" to your list. You could call it the "edge of the one room school house" or "no age discrimination in school". I do not understand why we still segregating our students by age. It does not serve students well and in fact hurts them socially and academically.
Maybe we all could take a look at why we do this practice and what might happen if it was changed. As it seems now school is a sentence of time to serve more than an process of learning skills to be acquired.
In college one progresses at their own pace, taking generally four years to complete, but sometimes five or even three years depending on many factors. Australia uses this flexible model in high school and it works quite well.