I grew up in a U.S. public school, which meant no formal religious education, but I was fortunate to grow up in a city with a significant Jewish population (we got Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashannah off from school!), as well as a number of Jain, Sikh,and Hindu immigrants, which contributed to an extremely formative atmosphere of religious/cultural diversity. (Diversity along other lines wasn’t so hot - my lower-middle-class backgorund was probably the lowest economic rung in a school that was largely uber-affluent, and while we had several international students, we didn’t have very many American POC students). This was bootstrapped by my growing up in a pretty liberal Catholic church where other religions were discussed in Sunday school in a non-dismissive way, and non-Christian and non-Catholic ‘saints’ were often praised in the homilies.
It was a definitely shock to walk into a Czech public school where I taught for a year, and to see nativity creches all over the place in December. And is also quite a shock, now that I live in the American south, to encounter unambiguous Christmas Parades run by the city and Christmas Plays performed in the public schools, which both strike me as totally inappropriate, despite the largely secular/material trappings of that particular holiday.
