This is true to an extent. I've been teaching for almost a whole decade, and I've worked in both urban schools and rural ones, and yet I'm able to use the exact same techniques to gain student interest as I have been using across all of those schools for nine years... and considering that I work with high schoolers, who are normally the most difficult to "hook in" and gain their interest, I'd say that your assertion depends on the situation and topic.
Part of the problem is that people often think that kids have to have something familiar to latch on to in order to gain their interest. Often, driving their motivation with curiosity over something new works just as well. WS is full of potential to gain the interest of children, if parents will present it in the right light. But too often, parents seem to think that education stops with the teacher, and therefore if their kids aren't automatically interested in something outside of school, parents should not make an effort to gain their interest on a subject, when the opposite is true. If parents and others that kids look up to say and do things to motivate kids to be inquisitive and to think about what's around them, kids will thrive when learning opportunities present themselves. No level of edutainment can make a kid want to learn if learning isn't valued at home.
I've said before that Maelstrom definitely needed an update, but there are plenty of ways that the ride could have been updated to bring in new interest in today's children without forcing cartoon characters into it. An updated queue, some more modern animatronics, and an updated sound system, for example, could all work wonders. But like I said, it doesn't stop with WDW or even with teachers. If kids don't have adults around them who see the value in being lifelong learners, adults who are willing to instill that value in their children, then the children will simply not see the value in it, no matter how hard teachers push.
