I was fortunate enough to have two parents that let me stay at home and homeschool until high school, then they sent me off to learn from others. They taught me how to do almost all of those things in your list as the opportunities presented themselves. Did we disagree? Yes. Did I hate gardening a lot of the time? Yes. But then my parents would play video games with me after we were done which I loved. We learned how to give and take, how to do what each other enjoyed, and how to do life together. Now that I'm in my thirties, working from home, and have a little family of my own, I'm trying to replicate my childhood as much as I can. I think you have a great dream, I say go for it!
Kids can homeschool and cover all the same courses taught in school in 1/3 of the time, which leaves a lot of extra agency for the things the author talks about - doing meaningful work from a young age, exploring the world, self-directed learning, etc. etc.
Good point, it's not the exact same. But their new offering is much closer to what their competitors are offering, so I'd say it's still a move to try to better compete with the free offerings from other companies.
I have been a vocal critic of Microsoft acquiring GitHub, but gotta give credit where credit is due - this might be enough for me to move my private repos back to GitHub.