My apologies, fivejedjon. No native speaker is ignorant. However, when it comes to teaching others, they end up teaching citation form pronunciations, citation form sentences.
Let me give a concrete example.
When I was in India, I was looking for bus that goes to a town, spelled as "Vijayawada" in Indian English. When I asked local speakers there about its pronunciation, they gave me "citation" form. In speech (not presidential, of course), I dont hear anything closer to that citation form, because all approximants in that language get deleted in high frequency words. This is what I have in mind. Native speakers do many things, without being aware of all that go in there. When native speakers are questioned about non-citation forms, they say 'yeah, I know that; I speak in so and so contexts': I am not questioning this 'knowing'!
To me, the elite = those who teach citation forms, making the learners content with whatever the little they have mastered. This fits well with toastmaster/presidential speeches, singing, etc.
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Phonetics, phonology, rhythm, melody, etc--all these are gradient. Citation forms sit at the entrance of this gradient.