My kid is the same way - she has always disliked the rigidity of school in general, and high school is worse. While she “plays the game” well with excellent grades and test scores, she is just going through the motions when it comes to figuring out what the teacher wants and regurgitating it for the test.
She’s now a junior, and we’ve encouraged her to “hack” her education - who says it has to be the typical 4 years? Last year, she attended a semester school specializing in marine science (cut short due to Covid, which was devastating), and she is applying for study abroad programs for senior year. She finds her high school coursework less than inspiring, so she applied for and was accepted to an online Stanford course on China which she did as an EC first semester. She’s started a pilot’s license (paid for in part through her fast food job) and wants to start an EMT program when she turns 17 to find out if the medical field is a true interest.
With what will probably amount to a “weird” transcript, who knows what her college results will be? But she’s going to be true to herself, and if there happen to be fewer AP courses on her transcript, she’s willing to live with whatever happens.
I guess what I’m saying is that I can completely empathize with your son (and I’m actually a teacher!), and if he hates high school, he needs to know there’s nothing wrong with him. Consider spending a year abroad (check out NSLI-Y, CBYX, and YES Abroad for free competitive options), which would allow him to “skip” a year of high school and be arguably far more valuable than an additional year of science or SS. Good luck, and remember you’re not alone!
I skipped 3rd grade – I was probably several grade levels ahead at that point – and then was asked to skip 9th grade. I did so for a few weeks as I was bored in 9th grade and thought maybe 10th would be better. I was pretty lacking in social skills at the time and really did not fit in in a HS that valued sports (though it was considered among the best in the state for academics). However, I put myself back into 9th grade for three reasons: 1) my 10th grade classmates weren’t any smarter or more challenging than the 9th graders; 2) I was now in the same grade as my sister (who was two years older than I was) and even in a French class with her (no idea why); and 3) I was the smallest kid in my freshman class before the skip (I ended up relatively tall, but grew the last inch as a freshman in college). HS was boring intellectually and painful socially.
My take-aways. My mother asked if I wanted to go to a private high school. I declined on the grounds that they were probably snooty aristocratic kids (largely correct) and we were solidly middle class and Jewish and that I wouldn’t fit in there either. This was probably a mistake as I probably lost the opportunity to be intellectually challenged. I ended up entering one of HYPMS at age 16. I still had a lot of work to do socially, although I was over 6’ by the time I got to college. It all worked out fine in the end. I was really intellectually challenged and had a very good time in college, but I might have been better getting help or backers had I spent another year or two in the right academic setting. In general, I think getting a better school experience beats skipping a grade.
Based upon my experience, I would suggest a) finding a better school; or b) working out an online education experience that would work for your son’s last year(s). If he were to skip, I would strongly urge a gap year, perhaps one in which he could use summer school at a college (my son did a course at Harvard Summer School) to get his fourth year of science or language.