> In a really healthy society, with really good schools, dropping out would (99%) be quite regrettable.
That depends.
Those who drop out because they can't hack it will find misplaced regret, blaming future woes on dropping out when in reality the problem is a continuation of the deficiencies that lead them to dropping out.
Those who drop out because they have bigger and better plans won't think about it again.
> The people who are on to bigger and better things are in fact vanishingly rare.
Dropouts are rare full stop, and those that do drop out overwhelmingly have life issues that causes them to drop out. The well rounded people who do okay in school aren't the ones dropping out, it is those with things like mental disabilities. It is not the act of dropping out that is impactful, it is the problems that lead to dropping out that continue after dropping out. It is a misconception that continuing in school would have cured what ailed them.
> A really healthy society, with really good schools, would provide a path for those who can't hack it.
You severely underestimate just how challenging life is for some people. If dyslexia was the biggest challenge to overcome, we'd have nothing to speak of. Some of these kids are, to be blunt, effectively vegetables. They are accepted into school for the sake of relieving the parents/primary caregivers, offering what is a babysitting service, but there is no academic value in them being there. They will not continue in school for prolonged periods of their life and there is no reason for them to.
I guess in your imagined "really healthy" society, all people are perfectly equal. That's impossible. But if we did somehow live in your made up world then we can say that we already have "really good schools". Nobody in our schools we have drops out without a good reason.
> Dropouts are rare full stop, ...
From a quick search, the State of Michigan has roughly an 8% dropout rate. Whatever your criteria for the term "rare", that is a huge number of kids.
If you are trying to run a really healthy society (vs. a Social Darwinism dystopia), then putting all the kids who don't do well in academic classroom settings on a "things like mental disabilities" - "effectively vegetables" spectrum seems extremely counterproductive.
> Whatever your criteria for the term "rare", that is a huge number of kids.
It is! When I go to the school to pick up my child, it is shocking how many have overtly visible challenges, never mind those who don't present to someone just casually walking in the door. It is rare, but rare is still a lot of people in large populations.
I live next door to Michigan and 3% of the students have their own personal assistant in school for the schools to be able to cope to their severe challenges, and, by accounts of family who work in that industry, that many more should have an assistant but there isn't a sufficient workforce to fill those roles. So that is around 6% of the students, give or take, right there who aren't really a good fit for being in schools. Used to be that they would have been dumped into institutions and never step foot in school, but that's not socially acceptable anymore.
I think there are two assumptions embedded in the parent comment that I think you're ignoring:
1) The people who are on to bigger and better things are in fact vanishingly rare. Like, yes, Bill Gates dropped out of college, but he dropped out of Harvard, not Evergreen Community College. He wouldn't have been there in the first place if he wasn't already capable of some big things.
2) A really healthy society, with really good schools, would provide a path for those who can't hack it. Its almost definitionally not a good school if the process exposes some deficiencies, then just gives up. Like "well, it turns out your dyslexic, here's your cardboard box and begging pan" sounds like a bad school.