You are conflating two unrelated issues:
1. Letting students learn their own way as opposed to memorizing teachers' instructions
2. Letting disruptive kids disrupt education of their classmates
#1 is good, #2 is bad. In fact #1 never works when #2 is present.
I'm not an education expert. But I think you have to ask why the disruptive kids are being disruptive. It might be that #2 is caused by not having #1 (at least, that was my experience: I stopped being disruptive when they let me do my own thing).
#1 is good, #2 is bad. In fact #1 never works when #2 is present.