With you 100% there, Jenna! The schools here just feed information for kids to spit back into standardized, multiple choice tests, rather than teaching the thrill of learning and exploring new worlds. You can graduate high school with an appalling lack of knowledge about anything or ability to think things through, and most don't even care that they know nothing. 
I agree that playmobil helps kids enjoy learning something, whether it's about history or animals or dinosaurs... it makes it interesting.