Places of Learning?

If schools are truly places of learning, then a child shouldn't be "good at" or "bad at" school. Every child has the capacity to learn and usually the eagerness, too, until school takes it away. The very idea that one can be "bad at" school means there is something going on besides learning. Being inherently "bad" at learning is impossible. Sure, we all learn at different paces and in different ways. But the fact remains that we can all learn, and we all do learn, one way or another. 

Perhaps public school only caters to certain types of learning, or only allows certain types of learning. This is especially true with NCLB and now Common Core, which have all but done away with hands-on learning of any kind. Hands-on education is less testable, or at least less directly testable. It's much easier to shove a story in front of a kid and have him answer the questions that go with it. Cheaper, too.