Well anything is better than the old and original Mysql extension for PHP. If you Google "PHP MySQL tutorial", there's lots of tutorials teaching still about mysql_connect and mysql_query.

AR is controversial but it is approachable.

In addition, I figure, those old PHP tutorials (code like it's the 2003!) are giving bad example and beginners can't understand the difference or realize that mysql_query + bunch of procedural code per file * 10 can be bad thing.

I should've been a bit more clearer. Laravel taught him bunch of generic best practices (like deployment procedures, GIT, OOP, MVC, etc) and using Laravel Query Builder and/or Eloquent makes the DB code more sane compared to mysql_query.

Laravel isn't the only framework which could've done this but like AR, it's quite beginner friendly :)