Are schools built for learning?

 After watching Mr. Richardson's Ted talk video It got me thinking about our current educational system. Mr. Richardson motivates all of us watching to think about this question "Are schools built for learning?" I keep asking myself this question and have only come up with a very firm answer of no.
 You see when people are asked what an ideal learning environment would be they seem to come up with the complete opposite of how our learning environment is. It's sad that like Mr. Richardson said many students are learning more out of school then they are inside schools. The problem is that we aren't teaching students what they are passionate about but, instead we teach them what the state gives us. We must be honest most of the stuff these students are expected to know they will never use outside of school. We have children dropping out of school because they just can't find the motivation to stay. Instead they seem to be stressed out and losing all passion of wanting to learn.
 An ideal learning environment in my opinion would be one where we get to know what interest our students. We get to know what drives their passion for learning. Then we base our curriculum around their passions and incorporate everyone's interest into our learning. This could be used in the future as a way to get students engaging more. It also helps motivate our students to want to better their education without having to force them into it. This is also a great way to help those students that don't really have a passion. By teaching them based off what all the others are motivated it could help them find a passion. We also must figure out what motivates our students to better their education and make sure we keep that motivation alive. Getting an education should be something many people should be passionate about but sadly this isn't the case. We have hours of learning going on inside classroom and then we send students home to learn more on their own time. But if students are interested in learning inside the classroom what makes us so sure they will be willing to learn on their free time. What I'm saying is that we should find a way to motivate our students to get them passionate about learning.
 With that being said I do believe schools should be 7 hours long. If students are really passionate about their learning there will be no distractions or unnecessary interruptions. This means that students can learn a lot in a couple of hours. This way they can have more time to learn about the world around them or further learn about their passions.
 A way to measure students understanding or performance of a subject you could use a assessment of a test. But I feel like you could measure this by having them write about it. This way they get to have freedom to write about what they got out of the lesson. I believe that to we need to get students to want to learn on their own free will by motivating them.