boondoggle is a scheme intended to fool (i.e. bamboozle, hornswoggle, hoodwink - other words you may have heard which are very similar in meaning) people into believing that all is well, that a dire situation is in fact under control. In this vein, the term government boondoggle is rather redundant.
If you are a visual learner, you learn by reading or seeing pictures. You understand and remember things by sight. You can picture what you are learning in your head, and you learn best by using methods that are primarily visual. You like to see what you are learning.
This is not the only classificatory scheme, but it shares with other such schemes the idea that people's learning styles can be classified into typologies. The pull to understand what type of learner we are, much like the pull to understand what type of person we are, is very strong. Naturally, parents want the best for their kids, and learners in general want engaging, interesting material-- but what is the research evidence behind these learning styles?