I'm not a teacher or anything, so maybe take this with a grain of salt, but my personal experience has been a bit different. I know multiple kids that just skipped high school, and are now in college. I know a high school-er that spends almost all day reading math textbooks, and interacting with college professors. I know a white kid that's fluent in Chinese, and learned it of his own volition. Kids building cars, flying airplanes, writing thousands of lines of open source code, working internships at major companies, and these are just the people I personally know.

Maybe it's just survivorship bias, and I'm only interacting with the lucky or talented ones?