Did other people growing up in the UK have a different experience?
If you aren't in the UK, were you taught civics in your country?
I had a year of American government around 9th grade-ish, which covered the basics of the system, the founding documents, etc. and then spent a lot of time with the formative debates driving it (Federalist/Anti-Federalist Papers, Montesquieu, Hobbes, Locke, and such). Plus during elementary school a year or two of American/state history, which had civics elements. Then there were sundry courses like geography and things like read-alouds covering topics like economics (I definitely recall learning about inflation and the labor movement in middle school).
American Government was also a required course at uni (which I believe is common among liberal arts schools). That one was more practical in focus.
Back in first grade I remember participating in a mock election based on the candidates of the day...
Bear in mind I was homeschooled for much of the above, and many of the homeschoolers I knew were already very civically engaged with volunteering, Boy Scouts, interning at the state capitol, and more.
Maybe that was just my social group, but we as a family weren't political activists or anything (nor was politics a particularly common or passionate discussion) and some of this was just the path laid out by the curriculum.
Apparently no longer taught at all. One of the reasons we homeschooled our kids.
Recent events make me think this may have been a better approach to the state we have devolved to currently. But the internet happened, people started waking up and talking more, so now you have the opposite approach which is an endless torrent of bipartisan squabbling hypercharged by social and traditional media, and everything in between. This has resulted in low turnouts and a level of general disinterest in local and national politics. People now have stronger opinions about things happening in far away places than their own (crumbling) local towns and cities, because it's just too tiring to care about things which at best won't care about you, and at worst will actively try to harm you.
That said, what was interesting is that some years later there was discussion about opening up the vote to 16 year olds, and most of the discussion/pressure/focus was on the 6th formers who stayed on at high school, as it was assumed the dropouts and academically un-serious college-goers would have little interest in such things. There is certainly a pre-political class present in these institutions and their societies, leading to the public (read private) school system providing the majority of our politcal representation, with sadly no change in sight for the forseeable future.
My opinion is that the cynics were/are correct, politics is a class based business/sport/game depending on where you should happen to find yourself within the socio-economic strata of the UK.
Also, we share our horribly broken voting system with one other country in the world. That country would be Belarus. I haven't visited Belarus, so can't comment on how it's working out for them. But in this country, it has driven mediocrity in our representation and leadership much to our detriment. And a party called ReformUK (previously known as UKIP then the Brexit Party) may not be the panacea some people expect it to be. So you now have a choice between the joke of a party in power, and the joke of a party in opposition.
-The thoughts and opinions comprising this comment were generated by a human being using hardware and energy paid for by a human being. I would like to thank the internet and the HN website for enabling them to be published to the wider population for general consumption.