Vocational schools do exist and they are useful but that's not what we are concerned about. People who cheat not to learn useful skills simply spend their time and money.

I'm not sure this is so significant. Humans naturally communicate and synthesize information. The school system is like a stick that pokes and prods the tip of the iceberg to try to nudge it here or there. By comparison, people's interests, skills, and drives play such an overwhelming role that I think we could chop off several years off the standard education curriculum and be better off.

I would argue the main limitation isn't education, but the opportunity for a student to pursue what their instincts are telling them to pursue. This is difficult today because school is designed for scale at the expense of being one size fits all. This is because teachers are a limited resource, not because it's the ideal way to do things. AI has the potential to provide more targeted education, where different students could take wildly different paths.

Why just use the written word via essays? You could use other forms of media such as video, physical art, or maybe programming to teach this as well. The five paragraph essay isn’t the only game in town!

It will go the same way. You need to understand the basics (to various degrees depending on the direction of your education), then learn how to use the new tools we are creating.

Honestly, I'd prefer we treat this as an opportunity to introduce tight feedback loops into essay writing the way we do with programming. Then evaluate the end result as a whole rather than a way to nitpick grammar rules.