Can be, definitely; but personally I find there are a lot of things that I learn much better by doing (I hope I count as "intelligent" for the purposes of your comment). Many things that involve following a process, for example, I find I'd rather learn by working through them a couple of times but have the written-down version as a reference/reminder.

Perhaps people think it's more offputting for someone who prefers learning-by-doing to be handed a book and told "Learn" than for someone who prefers learning-by-reading to be shown something?

I think, though, it's relatively unusual for people to have thought in any depth about what methods of learning work well for them, at all.