Unfortunately, your experience is rare especially now.
Our society mixes up education with the Department of Education. Education is great. The Department of Education is a misnomer.
Even concepts like asking before you go to the bathroom in high school are deeply ingrained in us to be obedient above all else. As an adult, that concept is ridiculous to me. You have to sign a pass and get approval before you relieve yourself??? That is absurd. Why aren't introducing how to politely and quietly leave a room when there is a speaker, that sneaking out to goof off has consequences, and that they are smart enough at 16 to know when they have to poop?
People say school would be chaos if they didn't do that, but I disagree. Give them responsibility over their own education and if they fail, it's their own fault.
No wonder kids go crazy when they get to college. They're micro managed every moment of their lives and then suddenly unleashed on the world. Of course the first woke professor who strokes theor ego and allows them to shirk societal norms will have their ear.
Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox now.

But really, look into the major players behind the formation of the puvl8c education system. It wasn't good.
We also had to ask to go to the bathroom. It was kind of like asking to be excused from the dinner table or waiting to start digging in until everyone was seated, which was also a thing in our house. I didn't ever see it as restricting, just a polite thing to do. They figured we were in large part, capable of knowing when we needed to hit the restroom between classes.
The problem with the Public School systems which all of my children attended at one point or another, is that like our system of government, it is meant for a moral people. People who don't need to have it legislated to care about their fellow citizens, who know right and wrong and have the honesty to self-address their mistakes as such.
When I was growing up, I was a rarity, in that both of my parents worked and that for 5 years of my life (my mother was home for the first 3), I had either been in day car or with a babysitter after age 8, I babysat myself and my brother (except when grandma would come for long stay visits).
Now days, every kid, almost from birth, is raised by someone OTHER than their parents. Is it surprising that by the time they enter school, they have no stable moral foundation, just a jumble of puzzle pieces in a bag? The teachers then get to assemble the puzzle into anything they want.
The problem doesn't start in the class room. The problem starts at home, or more aptly, not at home. We have lost the balance between both parents having to work to make ends meet, and both parents working to keep up with or better yet, beat the Joneses.
The other problem I see (and sorry if this offends) but, when I was in school, not a single kid came from a divorced family. We had three who had lost a parent through death. Everyone else found a way to make it work. Marriage was a serious, serious decision because it was for life.
Our senior year religion classes focused heavily on relationships, marriage, how to choose a partner, and working through problems. Like my husband and I, there were about 10 other couples from our class who got married to each other and stayed married for at least 20 years; haven't been to another reunion, so don't know now.
The public school system is a mess but, many of the problems in our society start at home.