I'm not so sure, I understand Model-View-Template much better than I understand Model-View-Controller.
And for a real beginner, what a view is doesn't matter at all; what matters is how quickly they can start to feel they understand what they are doing with the system.
So your argument from personal knowledge is why something is easier or harder :)
Here's my experience: Having attempted to do semi-meaningful things in both a few years ago, I can tell you that hacking on wordpress and figuring out its internals (as a newbie in php) vs hacking in django (as a newbie in python) that the django experience was orders of magnitude more effort.
And for a real beginner, what a view is doesn't matter at all; what matters is how quickly they can start to feel they understand what they are doing with the system.