Here was my solution in grades 1-12:

Too soon in the early grades, get dumped
on by the teachers, just give up, learn
enough just without really trying, and
depend on social promotion.

When get to the good stuff, math and
science in grades 9-12, just sleep in
class, ignore the teachers, refuse to
submit or admit to doing any homework,
have utter contempt for the teachers,
study the text largely independently,
be one of the
best students in the school on the
state aptitude and achievement tests,
end up with Ivy League SAT scores.

In college, do much the same, write
a math honors paper, and get good GRE scores.

At work
find a good problem and on an airplane
ride get an intuitive solution.

Then
back in school,
in graduate school, use material in
a great course in the first year to make good
math out of the intuitive solution,
write some illustrative software,
submit the work as the Ph.D. dissertation,
pass an oral defense, graduate, and
be done with formal education.

So, do something like in the OP but
within the formal system, with a lot
of sleeping in class and ignoring
that system.

There were some great times!

(1) In eighth grade general science,
the teacher was explaining partial
vacuums and applying those to the
operation of a traditional farm
house lift pump. I glanced at his
diagram and put my head down to sleep.

He decided to call on me to explain
the pump; yup, looked like he was
trying to stick me for sleeping in
class! So, I just closed my eyes,
imagined the pump diagram, and went
through the whole pump cycle in
excessive detail, with each pressure
difference and each valve opening and
closing, and he never bothered me again!

(2) In plane geometry, I was totally in
love with the subject and ate the
exercises like popcorn by the hand full.

There were some more difficult supplementary
exercises in the back of the book, and
one of these I didn't get on Friday
afternoon so continued and finally got
it Sunday evening. I worked 100% of the
non-trivial exercises.

On Monday in
class, the teacher worked an easy
exercise with the same figure, and
for the first and last time I raised
my hand and said that there was an
exercise in the back with the same
figure. About 20 minutes later
the teacher was loudly exhorting the
class "Think, class, think! Think
about the given ...."

Since I didn't
want to be accused of ruining the whole
class, I raised my hand and started
"Why don't we ...", and the teacher
screamed "You knew how to do it all
along." Of COURSE I knew how to
do it; no way would I have
asked otherwise. Besides, how'd I
know that she wasn't also doing
all the exercises?

(3) A question on the state test
was how to inscribe a square in
a semi-circle. I thought, construct
a square, circumscribe the circle,
and find the crucial length in the
given figure by constructing a
fourth proportional, and after school
wanted to check my solution so
started and she said about my
square "You can't do that".
As I later learned, I'd shown
her 'similitude', my reinvention
of an advanced technique.

Of course the schools are from mostly
useless down to really destructive,
but, still, it's possible, especially
if ignore the teachers and sleep in
class, to learn fairly well anyway.

Besides, especially here on HN,
nearly all of the US software industry
depends on self-learning.

Yes, in time there will be some
good groups for support and guidance for home schooling
with, often, some occasional small
classes by really well qualified
teachers. Then the public K-12
system will be regarded as the cheap,
low grade, bottom level, last hope
alternative for disadvantaged
children and be much less well funded
than now because nearly all the good families
will be using private alternatives
and not care about the public system.

Yes, the current public system is a disaster
for education and the children, but,
you have to remember, it's really
expensive!