I don't believe it's a black and white issue...I think some compulsory education is beneficial at a younger level. For these kids, school is where they learn the very basics, meet friends, develop socially, are guaranteed a breakfast and lunch, and preferably are inspired to learn more in the future. However the current system doesn't make much sense for older kids, doesn't prepare anyone for the work force or life, and could use tweaking to improve results throughout the system. Here's how I imagine education.
For children 3-10, education would be compulsory and follow a standard curriculum with the teacher having some flexibility over it. The goal of this stage would be to teach the basics everyone needs to know, expose children to a variety of topics and areas of study, and inspire them to want to learn more in the future. Notice under my system children would start school earlier. Many recent studies have shown that younger children actually have a greater ability to learn, and the competition is fierce in Japan and parts of China for parents to enroll their children in the best schools as early as possible. I think the main issue to address at this stage is how to inspire children to want to continue learning in the future. The current system does a horrible job of that. At least in US public schools, education is focused on teaching facts, figures, and rules without much effort to put them in a real-life context or explore the topics around them. This is great if your goal is to teach children how to pass standardized tests, but horrible if you're trying to prepare them for real life, to think independently, or to get them interested in learning.
For children 10-14, education would still be compulsory, but the curriculum would be set by the student, by selecting a series of areas they're more interested in learning about, and being able to choose from the courses in these areas. This would be more like the college system. Of course the curricula would be structured so that they would have to have the right basic knowledge before taking advanced classes, but it would be possible to test out of those classes, just like in the college system. I should also point out that not all of these course would need to be in a classroom and could be online, self-study, correspondence, etc. In the final year, there would also be some required courses geared toward introducing the student to the real world, including courses on life management skills, area specialization, and even an apprenticeship or internship to so that they have some experience in a field they're interested in and can include that in any future resume. Having a life management course may sound a bit silly, but you've no clue how many colleges have them just because students coming in from high school honestly don't know how to create a resume, do a budget, or take responsibility for their own lives.
And at 14, congrats! You've gone through the compulsory system hopefully with a desire to learn more and the knowledge equivalent to an associate's degree that you can use toward employment or to further your education more. I should point out that I also personally believe that 14 should be the age of majority, so you would have freedom to go wherever you wanted from here.
From here on out, there would be a non-compulsory system geared toward people of
all ages that would be very flexible. I think culturally one of our biggest issues is the thought that education ends when you leave school, when it should be a life-long desire that was fueled from very early on. If you felt like you needed some structure to help you learn an area, you could contact an organization which would provide you with an advisor to help you figure out how to go about it in the way that best suits you. As an adult, personally I still like having some structure to my learning, and I hate how MOOCs such as Coursera or EdX just dump a bunch of courses on their site without any guide as to even what exact knowledge one should have prior to taking the course. However, if you wanted to do it all on your own, you would be free to! You would get recognition for your knowledge by taking a certification exam, like many industries currently use...for example, the CompTIA A+ or the Microsoft 70-680. It would basically be industry-wide recognition that you know what you're doing...or if you just want the knowledge, you don't have to take the exam. It's completely self-paced, and completely up to you, but it would be available to you until the day you died.
Just my opinions there.
