What was missing from my education?

I'm thinking back to my K-12 education--what I remember of it. While it was adequate in that I finished twelfth grade reasonably well prepared for college, I didn't like it much (especially grades 4-8), and I want to avoid making some of those same mistakes with my own child.
I went to school in three different districts in two states. What was missing? This is a draft, as I'm thinking 'aloud' here.

1) A sense of direction.
I didn't feel that I had any kind of road map, that there was some intentionality behind the daily assignments. This was especially true when the assignments were required without regard for whether I had already mastered the skills or content they were intended to reinforce. I'm not sure that many teachers, districts, or states had given deep thought to why we were marching through the curriculum--but if they had, it was not shared with the students. Consequently, I was disengaged. Some candor about purpose, some framing, some throughlines, some drawing attention to recurring themes would have been so nice. I feel that if we want kids to connect the dots, we have to let them know that the dots are intended to make a big picture.

2) Tinkering.
Nearly everything was a closed-ended question: monkey see, monkey do. I got very good at providing right answers, fast, with no creativity. The purpose of any activity was predetermined and generic, and any "what ifs" were considered a distraction. When I eventually had a chance to create my own project in a gifted pull-out program, I had no ideas. I had neither had enough input nor been encouraged to build the skills to generate something of my own. (However, I did very well on the SAT.)
For student-owned project time to be effective, students must have access to generative topics on a regular basis, and there must be time to delve into material and then allow it to sink in before we ask for output.

3) The physical world.
I sat and was lectured to in class; I sat and read books (my main hobby); I sat in front of the TV. I did little with my body and little outdoors. Half an hour of PE once a week only confirmed my sense that I was clumsy. Now that screens are everywhere, the danger of being disconnected from physical reality is all the worse.

4) Genuine inquiry into other places and peoples.
I didn't get to start a foreign language until seventh grade, and then it was at a 'lite' level. Anything we did with regard to other countries and times was superficial; there was no serious attempt to understand viewpoints significantly different from our own, much less how they evolved or unfolded. Of all the ways in which my education was shallow, this might be the worst, in that it subtly devalued other human beings.

5) Community.
There was no sense of being on a team working toward a common vision. There were rules, but they did not emerge from a consensus of our values; they were merely imposed. Achievements were for one's own sake, mostly in that they increased one's status with adults. We were not in it to change the world, not to benefit our neighbors, but to get a good report card. Especially as kids get older, this is patronizing; it's no wonder that so many eventually decide the hoops are not worth jumping through.

6) Reflection.
There was no time set aside, when we finished something, to consider honestly what we had gotten out of it and whether it was any good. Like #1, if this was being done, it was not done by the students. As with many of these missing items, the lack of planned reflection indicates that students do not have the authority to shape their own learning.