Thank you for this! 82% is right in the middle.

Children who have been raised to value learning will, in all likelihood, value learning. This is not a surprise!

I would also be curious to see the breakdown of what fields those students go into.

Some people are capable of self-learning in certain fields where as others are not. A great example of this is math, we all have heard stories (or know the person, or are the person!) of someone who can learn math on their own straight from a text book. Then there are others who learn best from an interactive discussion about math with a teacher. And then there are those who learn best about math from a discussion within a peer group!

If you look at our current teaching system, it tries to target all three learning styles to varying degrees.

Hearing stories about some wonder-kid in 7th grade who taught himself everything up to calculus in a single summer by reading on his own doesn't really help the discussion around setting national educational policy, because that kid is, to say the least, an outlier.

Writing is similar. Having an instructor guide students in areas to learn can be very valuable. Left to their own devices and being told to just write poems for a few hours a day for some length of time, I am betting most students wouldn't stumble upon haiku(s?) on their own!

Please, can you give more insight about the school, instead of this short info "No curriculum - 80% went to college". What happens to 20%, are they completely uneducated because they didn't want to learn? Do they past some official mandatory tests? How exactly do they learn, who teaches them? You mentioned no classes if not requested, maybe 90% of knowledge gaining happens on that requested classes? How often do students get expulsion? What happens if some student don't want to do anything or don't even show up in school?

I think the main problem is that these days we tend to look at this as a purely quantitative matter, when it's largely a quality matter.

We largely abandoned the enlightenment ideas of a humanist education. One whose purposes it isn't to drill people into fulfilling norms, but that enables them to live fulfilled lives where they can express themselves and grow into the kind of educated citizen being able to judge on political matters beyond who you'd like to drink a beer with more.