This resembles largely my experience at a Montessori school (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_educati

This resembles largely my experience at a Montessori school (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education). While there were "grades" (they had to to be compliant with the Mexican education system), grades were bundled into clusters, so a room would have grades 1-3, another 4-6. For each room, there would be one teacher, whose main goal was to guide the students (in fact we called them "guides", not teachers). Skills and knowledge were containerized and were part of a dependency tree. There were several different areas (biology, math, linguistics, etc) and in each you were expected to reach a certain level at the end of your 6th grade, but you were otherwise free to explore subjects at your own pace and in the direction of your preference. This resulted in kids specializing in certain areas, a certain level of competition and pride in your expertise, and an early grasp of what you liked. Overall, I think the result was very positive, and the most visible difference, at least when I left the Montessori school to a new traditional-style classroom, was that I felt that Montessori kids had a certain genuine love for learning and sharing knowledge, whereas most of my new peers felt that learning was a chore imposed on them. Obviously this is one anecdote, and would love to hear more cases.