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I don't know about the deal with second guessing about what would astound the founding fathers here.
I mean, did the founders really anticipate a society where every single person would have to have a certain level of formal education in civics?
I think they more anticipated that people would know freedom and democracy from having to fight for it. Maybe they anticipated strong local social structures where the better educated few would provide trusted counsel on political matters to others in their social sphere.
One thing they perhaps didn't anticipate was social fragmentation at the local level and consolidation of "opinion power" on very complex matters in the hands of a very small, centralized media minority. In this climate, individuals do need to learn formal civics because there is no well educated local counsellor known to them personally who has the resources and trust to protect their interests right up the political food chain.
In this context, the teacher who talked about giving "local" examples of civics (like a skateboard park) wasn't just giving a simple civics analogy but was getting at the heart of civics itself.
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