By and large I agree with the article's content - i.e. that encouraging learning from the earliest ages will have a greater positive development impact.
Two comments however: good learning is not necessarily related to what is paid to teachers. I have yet to see any correlation made to this, yet it is an assertion repeatedly brought forth. Higher wages do not necessarily attract better teachers - only better interview performers. Having said that, however, I do agree that teaching should be fiscally commensurate with other professions.
Secondly: I see no reason at all why the primary care giver role in which learning is maximised is almost automatically always assigned to mothers, as in your article. Fathers have an equal contribution to the learning rate or otherwise of children.
I do agree that so far teachers are proving the biggest barrier to implementation of change in the learning process. It is almost as if they are guarding a territory, with little real regard to benefits to be attained by their charges. Yet my experience of teachers, of which I was one, is that their qualifications are lacking. Academically, I found few who were sufficiently educated in literacy/numeracy skills themselves to be promoting this learning in others and was constantly in dismay by their poor spelling, grammar, ability to think through mathematical problems and so on. Therefore an overhaul of the (adult) teaching system is as much required as the (child's) education system.