I think that disinterest in the process in today's adults is a product of their ignorance of it.

I'm not so sure about that. Most kids here learn about how government works at some point or another, as part of a social studies course at school, but that doesn't seem to have done much for political awareness. (It's always funny on Canada Day when some news agency inevitably does a poll which shows that some small but embarrassing percentage of kids and adults think Canada has a president...)