Different teacher's approaches will match different student's learning styles. That is definitely not a reflection on a person's intelligence.
If this book doesn't work for you, something else will. I have never done well with "here is a tuning, get creative". Yet, there are other people who just fool around with it and come up with truly unique and interesting stuff (and many more who don't). Also, I am not good at memorizing an entire piece and reciting it back to an audience or recording machine. I seem to fall somewhere between these two extremes.
The approach that this book takes does seem to work for my learning style, though it would augment other things I may be doing, rather than being a "main course". Robert Conti's material, though much more involved in actually playing "real" sings as chord melody solos and learning the fretboard through that experience rather than drills, seems to work well for me, and that is my main course, since playing "real" songs well is my goal. Conti said that all teaching/learning approaches should lead to the same place, with that place being that you can play music on the guitar. I believe him.
So, it is really a matter of learning to recognize what works for you. We are all different in many ways, and gauging ourselves by what somebody else can or can't do is not a good idea because of that. I would guess that there is a lot you can already do on the guitar, and it would be a good idea to reflect on how you learned what you already know for clues on how to continue to learn.
Tony
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