Every functional organization throughout history has been some form of meritocratic system. Functional does not guarantee benevolence/a meritocratic system is neither utopian nor dystopian in and of itself, but some attempt at meritocracy is a prerequisite to being able to aim a system at all and keep it from causing harm through dysfunction.
Whether or not more local emphasis is better when talking about civic education is a much longer conversation. Determining what proper civic education should be is an extremely difficult balancing act. That difficulty and the long term ramifications of education is why I think it's likely to be THE most important problem in upcoming decades. In order to avoid dystopian outcomes that difficulty needs to be confronted honestly and pragmatically. Systems become most dysfunctional and dystopian when they pursue a vision without regard for pragmatic considerations and are willing to become increasingly "in debt" to a vision by doing things that are very bad in the short term to medium term for an imagined, non existent benefit in the long term. I think it's perfectly possible to aim a system in pragmatic directions towards actually viable paths to betterment which balance short, medium, and long term considerations without the type of indebtedness to vision that leads to bad outcomes. Those paths won't be perfectly defined, and the benefits might end up being modest. In short I don't think I'm advocating for anything utopian, just intentional, pragmatic, and in service of whatever best paths make themselves visible. I think we are not looking at paths which are much better than the one public education is currently on. Exactly how much better civic education could be is a big unknown, but my hope is that it could be drastically improved.
Whether or not more local emphasis is better when talking about civic education is a much longer conversation. Determining what proper civic education should be is an extremely difficult balancing act. That difficulty and the long term ramifications of education is why I think it's likely to be THE most important problem in upcoming decades. In order to avoid dystopian outcomes that difficulty needs to be confronted honestly and pragmatically. Systems become most dysfunctional and dystopian when they pursue a vision without regard for pragmatic considerations and are willing to become increasingly "in debt" to a vision by doing things that are very bad in the short term to medium term for an imagined, non existent benefit in the long term. I think it's perfectly possible to aim a system in pragmatic directions towards actually viable paths to betterment which balance short, medium, and long term considerations without the type of indebtedness to vision that leads to bad outcomes. Those paths won't be perfectly defined, and the benefits might end up being modest. In short I don't think I'm advocating for anything utopian, just intentional, pragmatic, and in service of whatever best paths make themselves visible. I think we are not looking at paths which are much better than the one public education is currently on. Exactly how much better civic education could be is a big unknown, but my hope is that it could be drastically improved.