It's not entirely clear what you're saying, but the sooner we acknowledge that children are inevitably formed by their environment and there's no "natural" way to let them somehow form themselves the sooner we can start discussing what is good to teach them and the correct way to do it.

“Our school system”?

Dunno where you’re from, but different countries have different standards of education.

children are clay. That's the problem. The issue arises with how do we best raise them to be most equipped to tackle every day things.

Personally, i'm of the belief that we should teach them as much as possible, get them into more complex fields earlier, sociology and psychology especially. A good psych/socio class experience in HS can REALLY change someones life for the better.

Saying that children aren't to be treated like clay is wrong. They are clay, we need to be conscious of that, and sculpt them into a properly functioning human, who can enjoy life, and respect others. Not just raise them to be a wage slave or whatever the fuck the current meta is now. We saw this exact problem with the "feral child" incident.