Agreed. Using Laura Ingles is completely arbitrary. What if you brought one of the first humans on North America around? What if you brought someone from 100 years ago?
Let's face it, what works is a teacher with a blackboard and a room of students at desks. Nothing else has ever produced better results. I see constant attempts to take the effort out of teaching and learning, and they all fail.
Learning is like exercise. If you want to get strong, there are no shortcuts, you have to work at it. The same with learning.
Research has shown time and time again that almost everything beats the old teacher lecturing the class full of pupils at their desks. The problem is that none of these are ever implemented because
1. Lobbies of unionized unfireable teachers refuse to be told how to do their jobs.
2. School boards on ever shortening budgets rely on cramming even more students in the same old class as de-facto cost control tactic.
3. There's actually very good money to be made in substandard educational supplies.
p.s. And you are wrong about exercise too. While it is truth that it is not possible to get any results without breaking a sweat, exercises themselves have changed over time. It is now possible to achieve your goals in less time with less risk to injure yourself by hiring an instructor than trying to blindly emulate what you were taught a couple decades ago in high school.
c.f Jacques Barzun: ``People ask if I believe in technology in the classroom. Of _course_ I believe in technology in the classroom! What do they think a blackboard and chalk are?''
Change for the sake of change is -not- good.
I get that this article is asking for ways to update education, but the reason behind the question is wrong.