But that's the entire premise of a democratic society: that people aren't too uneducated to understand their own society. In order to ensure this, you need to take some steps: public education is a good start, but it's not necessarily sufficient as it's currently construed.

It's actually the opposite of an elitist point of view: you need to bring everyone (or, realistically, as many people as possible) up to the level they need to be at to productively contribute. This includes both knowledge (e.g. if it has to do with politics, it's a good idea to have some idea about how the government works in the country under examination) and thinking skills (e.g. the ability to identify and not too readily fall for manipulative tactics like misdirection, character assassination; the ability to consider different possibilities; and so on).

However, if your society is failing in its duty to produce educated members of society, you can't just completely ignore this and assume it's fine. It is important to judge the actual state of affairs.