Perhaps I wasn’t clear.
On the question of language, we sometimes refer to teenagers as teenagers and sometimes refer to them as children. Either way, they are children, legally, physically and emotionally. They’re at a different stage of childhood to younger children, but they are children and need certain boundaries.
You asked why we’re still ‘doing this’. Well, the point about teenagers being children matters in terms of the concerns you have and questions you’re asking. No, teenagers are not literally unable to go to the toilet alone, which you’ve mentioned in challenge to the rules in schools about toilet use. It is, however, challenging to run a school for hundreds/thousands of young people without some rules around toilet use.
Some teenagers, being children in adolescence, are not particularly mature and do not behave sensibly when they leave class to go to the toilet. Some engage in disruption, some in vandalism. Some engage in behaviours that harm themselves or others which, being children, requires a safeguarding rationale. Some just want to miss lessons or check their phones. Many do not do any of these things, but even so it simply isn’t practical to have large numbers of children (of any age) out of lessons in limited toilet facilities at once.
I’ve never worked in a school where the teacher doesn’t have some discretion about toilet usage even where there are whole-school rules. That’s not to say some schools don’t get it wrong, but as others have said these become newsworthy because they are the exception. I understand that toilet use is just one example you’ve given, but the media cases are usually the exceptions that prove the rule.
What I would say is that it’s often children who are out of lessons, have been picked up by pastoral or senior staff or who are ‘in trouble’ who will speak to admin staff to air their grievances. The vast majority of students will be polite to admin staff but are busy in lessons and with friends and have very little interaction with them on a day-to-day basis.
This is where the teenager part actually really matters - as it’s the most vulnerable teens, and those who are struggling the most, who crave interaction and attention from adults around them whom they perceive to be safe.
This is quite commonly staff they see as neutral - so not teachers, who they see as rule enforcers, but staff in the office or the canteen, for example.
These staff play a really important role in safeguarding as they will often pick up information, but they do get a fairly skewed picture at times as well. For example, the child waiting in reception who is about to be sent home for the third time that term and is talking to the receptionist won’t have the most balanced view of school. That said, they’re probably the child who most desperately needs the rules and boundaries that they’re complaining about.
That’s not to say that I don’t think there are issues with education - I do. I think there are many. I don’t think, however, that things are as bad or schools as draconian as you are suggesting.