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[quote=Anonymous]I am Jewish and have a kindergartener in public school. We love the school and the teacher. My question (details below) is about the line between teaching holidays and respecting different cultures in public school and teaching religious material.

Last week, in preparation for the holiday season, the teacher asked if we could send a book about Hanukkah to school that she could read to the class to teach them all about Hanukkah. We sent in a book (Little Red Ruthie, which is a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, but with latkes) and our kindergartener got to tell the class about Hanukkah before they read the book. The class discussion centered around cultural aspects, like food and playing dreidel, not on religious teachings, which I think wouldn't have been appropriate for public school anyway, so I was happy with the whole thing.

This week, my kindergartener came home telling us all about Christmas. He has learned some things so far from his friends and from his after school center, but this information apparently came from a video the teacher put on in class at school, and my son learned that Christmas is about "the Christmas baby" who was born on Christmas and died on Easter, and I'm really bristling at that. I only have my kindergartener's summary of the video to go on, which might not be an accurate retelling of the content, but on the other hand, what he took away from it is maybe more important than how it was technically conveyed.

(I want to say here that the school has overall been really good about not making everything Christmas-centric. They're doing winter-themed activities and decorating with snow and snowmen, not trees and stockings. The class doesn't have an elf or anything like that.)

I know it's hypocritical of me to think it's ok for [i]my[/i] holidays to be taught in class, but not Christmas, but that's not really what I'm saying. I guess I'm wondering where you would draw the line between:
1. An acknowledgement of the multiculturalism of the class and teaching all the different holidays the students celebrate
2. Religious material[/quote]

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