I have said for a long time that if it takes until May to actually pay all the taxes that have been laid on you,(Tax freedom day) you are a slave for those months, and no one else seems to see it that way....so, for me in my old age, we are 1/2 slave and 1/2 free...but I have know better in my years...
You are correct. Our school experience is similar. We were just taught that America was this great country of freedom, with never a cautionary warning that to keep it that way, our homes, schools and churches must teach the Founders' ideas, or our freedom could be lost gradually and over time.
Perhaps if we had been taught that even Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and all the other Founders warned future generations that this was, in fact, an "experiment" to see whether a people could sustain and preserve a form of self-goverenment for themselves and their posterity--perhaps, then, we might not have just taken it for granted and let our elected leaders change it in a manner inconsistent with the Constitution.
Your position and mine on this point are not at odds with each other, but mutually supportive. The very fact that we were not taught that our American Constitutional government was an experiment which required each generation to be diligent and pass on the ideas of the founding era may be the reason why, during our lifetimes, so much of it has slipped away.
Cheers! It's not too late to restore the ideas and pass them on through every means available today!