Popular culture either ignores saints or debases their memory. Francis of Assisi, Thomas Becket and Thomas More are the only ones I've seen on film in my lifetime. Particularly in CCD classes, time constraints limit the focus mainly to doctrinal basics. Fine-tuning has to be done at home. That's not necessarily a handicap.
Children also learn by listening at the dinner table.
The important thing is that children hear it both places. We accumulated holy cards describing saints' specialties the way our son Daniel collects baseball cards, and along the way we picked up lots of stories. We emphasize the saints' obedience to the call of the Lord rather than the signs and wonders attached to their names, although we've kept some of the folklore, labeling it as such. We're in the older generation of parents, though. The parents of most of my children's friends are 10-15 years younger than we are.