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Notes -
I really wasn't anything like a particular cool kid, I had a couple social groups but frankly in retrospect a kind of an outsider complex that made me feel like a victim even though I probably wasn't. I was a bit of a geek, more into wasting time in video games than much socializing. albeit most of the time was playing those games with people I knew so socializing in a way.
I definitely had some social complaints but talking about the schooling itself? My teachers were professional and seemed happy and engaged in teaching the subjects, with one exception or my chemistry teacher that I think had to do with a last minute replacement for someone who quit. My fellow students mostly weren't disruptive and did what the teachers asked of them without much question. By highschool we were given quite a bit of freedom and had access to a wide range of elective options at either a community college or a career and technology center that many high schools shared(I took a couple CISCO certification classes, a video game design class and an mobile phone programming class).
People are talking about above and beyond improvements like better sleeping hours and even more accelerated options. These might be worth considering in their own right as an improvement on something that already works. But as far as doing all the basic stuff right I think I've personally seen it work given you have the right student population.
But yeah, the separate question of whether schooling itself is oppressive or the tyranny of teenaged social interactions ring somewhat true. Making young people going through puberty not be total assholes to each other constantly as they figure it all out just doesn't seem like it could reasonably be in scope in a discussion about improving schools in a country where, just to pull the first depressing stat I could find, 63% of high school seniors can't read at grade level.
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