Without tremendously disagreeing with your admittedly exaggerated point, but to add flavor: The learning of a skill or trade -- your skip to the exercises bit

Without tremendously disagreeing with your admittedly exaggerated point, but to add flavor: The learning of a skill or trade -- your skip to the exercises bit -- yes, teach a man to fish, etc. But to stare at, e.g., a polynomial for the first time ever in the exercises and be asked to "factor" it ... well, maybe your Gauss, but for others, it means going back in the chapter to read the axioms, lemma, the laws, examples -- that knowledge you apply to your own understanding, allowing you to learn. Most people didn't fly to Juneau, on a strong hunch, buy a spray paint can, graffiti a local bridge with "This is the capital of Alaska" just so they confirmed or finally learned, by being arrested for vandalism that, in fact, Juneau is the capital of Alaska. We learn this fact from, e.g., reading about it. Not all knowledge was derived through some form of the Scientific Method. To equally play provocative, I will posit, with no linked papers, most of what we know, to a person, is not from doing, but from some form of passive communication.