This article heavily relies on the assumption that schools do not allow for other learning modalities than passively consuming information, which is false.
Forcing someone to sit in school all day and then do homework after that renders the fact that they are technically also allowed to learn on their own in their remaining free time pretty much irrelevant.
School is not a place for being creative or productive. It prepares students for tests that they will eventually use to either get a job or go to university. In those places some people will make something people want (be productive) or have the opportunity to do something new (be creative).
This sounds like a dismissal based on a personal anecdote, rather than knowledge of what can be (and increasingly is!) done in a school. Many working in education have encouraged more interactive and project-based learning, such as PLTW[1] in STEM, and others[2] in other areas. Of course, it turns out that designing that while also teaching 6-8 classes a day to a couple hundred students is rather challenging.
I wouldn't disagree that school isn't a place for being productive, if productivity is defined as "making something people want." By that definition all learning is unproductive.
[2] For maths, reference the works of Jo Boaler, Peter Liljedahl, etc.; most standards I have seen in social studies in recent years have inquiry as a key component, and I know several teachers who make use of projects there; there is often agency in choosing projects in art, particularly in upper grades; and so on.
