The difference between 'smart' and 'book smart'

I don't think failure in assessments set by an educational institution necessarily renders you a complete dunce.

There are people who you can tell do possess some admirable level of intelligence just by entering a conversation with them, however cannot write an adequately satisfactory paper or answer questions in an exam to save their life. Or they may be extremely prone to basic spelling and grammatical errors (which I think is truly shameful, because surely it shouldn't be too difficult to obtain the knowledge base of a five year old learning the English language?).

Well either way, I often wonder at the reason to this.