RE: The Electoral College Conundrum

On civics class:
I was an exchange student in the US back in 1997, where I also signed up for "government" class, due to sheer curiosity. I remember very well how the Electoral College was presented: It's not perfect, by far, but it's the best, or rather only feasible option for a country such as the US. (No detail on what this 'such as' meant, the spacial distances, the size of its population, being subdivided into states and counties, etc.) Not one word on its connection to slavery, but a strong and repetitive emphasis on how it guarantees fairness for rural states, which already seemed a bit suspicious to me.