I've been working in them since 1983.
And, in all that time, there has always been tension between mainstream culture and the schools' purpose: academic learning, with the rest still present, but not primary.
Public schools are supposed to be inclusive. That means open to participation by all. That often results in vicious culture wars from the mainstream, who want no accommodations for those citizens attending their schools who are NOT mainstream. I could give you pages and pages and pages of examples. I'll settle for this one:
Fifteen years ago, teaching 2nd graders, I had a parent try to get me fired when I politely said "no" to a Halloween party. 15% of the students in my class were not allowed to "celebrate" Halloween. I was expected to send them off to another room, so they wouldn't be present during the party, or tell them to stay home. I did neither, since that would be denying them the public education they had a right to. I planned to do a harvest celebration instead, which they were allowed to partake in. Inclusive, and everyone got to do something fun, out of the routine. Over the decades, I have witnessed this debate, and participated, over and over. I've yet to see any consensus. It seems to be to emotional, too embedded in identity, to allow for reason on the part of many.
She didn't get me fired, but she did start a parking lot campaign to get a whole slew of parents complaining to the principal. A headache that lasted for a year. I am grateful these days to teach at a school that simply reminds kids that their holiday celebrations start after school. We have a PTO that will organize something for holidays. Attendance is optional, and it's not taken from the school day.
MLK, Presidents' day, Thanksgiving, and 4th of July are Federal Holidays. They are holidays by law, not preference, and teaching them is part of a school's responsibility.
I agree in part with your last paragraph; it would be nice if the first and foremost purpose of public school were to build community and culture; if that were true, of course, it would present the risk of not only building, but shaping, by inclusion and exclusion, culture. That would, imo, be un-American, to say the least. The truth is that, while there is a "mainstream," there is NO single "American" culture. America is made up of many cultures which attempt to peacefully co-exist; sometimes they do so successfully, sometimes not. To favor one over the other is neither ethical nor appropriate for a public institution. Fyi, some of the most vicious social wars in our culture are not, surprisingly enough, found between middle and high school girls, but between parents. Holiday wars at school, when allowed to happen, can make Little League parent brawls look like a picnic.
The sad truth, though, is that public education as it exists today is not at all about culture. It's about test scores, it's about the destruction of public education, it's about privatization, it's about profit, and it's about creating a large pool of cheap labor and cannon fodder for the future. Those are the goals of the "society" shaping schools. Test scores. Drilling. Teaching to the test. Having been reprimanded for spending too much time on history, which time should have gone to extra drilling for the reading test, I wonder what admins would say if I used that time to throw a party instead...we get away with celebrations at the end of each term, for "academic achievement."
Values and character education? It has fallen to schools to teach because society has dropped the ball, and, following that, so have families. Values and character are the responsibility of families; when we in school have to take it on, it's sometimes because the FIRST teachers haven't done their jobs. Schools should be playing a supporting role, focused on very general values/characteristics that are inclusive, like respect/responsibility, or empathy/integrity. Families and micro-cultures can then extend those to specifics like Mother's Day, Father's Day, St. Pat's, etc.. Holidays aren't really values, and in some cases, are more commercial than cultural. Or our culture is subject to commercial manipulation.
St. Pat's. What a model holiday for school kids: conform to the day's dress code or be bullied in the form of pinching. Happily, we are moving away from the way my generation celebrated. While we don't do anything different in the school day, this year I got a home-made leprechaun's hat made out of a toilet paper roll and felt, filled with gold chocolate coins from a 6th grader. I wore the tiny little hat, and randomly tossed the gold "coins" during the day. We didn't detour from the regular academic schedule, we didn't "celebrate," but we enjoyed ourselves.
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