How do you win a rigged game? Stop playing the game and make everyone else play your game.
According to my parents, I was exactly like your son in the mid 80s. They homeschooled me to make sure I wasn't held back from my potential.
It wasn't without its challenges, but nothing is. I'm doing pretty well now. I had a brief foray into "doing what I was told" in college, and figured out it was not going to get me to graduate with the grades I wanted, so I found an adviser who understood me, who would trust I could take care of myself and just sign off on my self-directed path through my degree. I had a longer foray after college (it seems I learn certain lessons slowly) and eventually grew so sick of getting up early every morning and driving an hour to work in shitty traffic that I just quit.
I quit everything for almost a year. For a year, I worked the hardest I've ever worked on whatever I wanted. And it got me nowhere.
Except...
Except it taught me that the world can't destroy me. It taught me that I'm capable of so much and it is only myself to blame for submitting to bosses or procrastination for not getting it done (and really, doing what your boss tells you to do is a form of procrastination). Everyone told me I was going to be ruined, that I'd not find work again because I'd been off so long "in this economy!" Dire consequences were in store for me, to not grovel at the feet of the recruiters, to not beg for my old job back. Bunch of lily-livered cowards. No such thing happened, and the idea is patently absurd. No, the only thing that can destroy me is myself.
I see all these people saying "You gotta pay your dues" and "sometimes you just have to suck it up and do what you're told".
And it is such complete and utter fucking bullshit. You don't have to do a single god damn thing you don't want to in this world. The world won't destroy you. You gotta buy this car to drive to work, drive to work to pay for this car. Yeah, screw that. What the hell do you need a degree for when the only people who are getting anywhere in this world are doing it by starting companies and getting out of the rat race? What the hell do you need a recruiter for when the only jobs they have to give you are going to make you a miserable son of a bitch?
What the hell do you need anything for? All you really need is a pencil and some paper, and the only reason you need that is because it's the only way to communicate with enough people. Write. Write. Write. Draw. Compose. Program. Mathematicate. A robot can dig a ditch for you, so why are you digging ditches? Do the one thing that humans can do that computers cannot: create. Don't let anyone tell you what to create. Create whatever you want. People fail not because they fail to create the right things, they fail because they fail to create anything.
And to all you people in here, talking about "you have to play the game," "that's the system," "deal with it": you're certainly free to ruin your own life, but leave the poor, damn kids alone.