The reason why schools place such emphasis on facts, less so on skills, and don’t even mention “inspiring students” as a goal in the curriculum is probably due to the fact that it’s easy to measure whether students have absorbed a collection of facts, less so when it comes to skills, and nearly impossible to do (other than a rough subjective assessment) when it comes to gauging whether students are inspired. It’s easy for a school to boast about how many perakim or dapim are included in the curriculum, or how many great books were supposedly read. However, kamus, quantity, is a poor substitute for eichus, quality, and no substitute at all for developing curiosity, a love of learning, and a hunger for knowledge. What in important in the long run is not how many Rashis you learn in 5th grade, but how many Rashis you learn over a lifetime.
The simple translation of the famous pasuk (Mishlei 22), “Chanoch la’na’ar al pi darko gam ki yazkin lo yasur mimena,” is that a child should be educated so that even when he grows older, he remembers his lessons. R’ Simcha Zisel, however, explained the pasuk as a charge to educate the child so that even when he grows old, he does not depart from that process of learning. It’s not facts and figures that are important to retain, but rather it's the habits of mind and the love of scholarship that are most crucial.