I think you've hit on something important with the music. People think of classical music as this big, monolithic thing and don't quite realize that it's an amalgamation of centuries of invention, discovery, and changing aesthetics. They're just presented with, say, Haydn and Beethoven side by side, with no context.

They're also encouraged to think of this music as something that happened in the past and that ended at about the time recording technology made its appearance, which just isn't true.