Its not that hard to balance, but it takes individual attention. Learning is intrinsically fun and you need to avoid turning it into drudgery. I home educated

Its not that hard to balance, but it takes individual attention. Learning is intrinsically fun and you need to avoid turning it into drudgery. I home educated by kids from about eight up to sixteen when they had done GCSEs (exams school kids in the UK do at 16). I very rarely had to force them to do anything, but I did have to make an effort to find the right approach to make things interesting. I think the solution is to let kids do what they choose but intervene if they are not learning at all. This takes judgement and knowing them as individuals. You could do it in schools if you have a very low student-teacher ratio (I say below 10 to 1 - so in the UK you would need about double the number of teachers in the state system), trusted teachers' judgement over metrics, and had more flexibility about learning to individual needs rather the prescribing exactly what kids need to learn at a particular age.