Why mourn for the loss of outdated cultural/ethnic knowledge of the dominant culture? There is plenty of new cultural/ethnic knowledge to be learned, especially by those of us stuck in a rut of over-valuing our own educational past.

Sorcha, I don't know how much time you actually spend in school classrooms nowadays, but it simply is not true that religion isn't being taught in American schools. The history of the major world religious traditions is being taught, but from a humanities/cultural studies perspective, not from a theological one. In a pluralist society such as the one we have in the US, I think we should be much more concerned about a lack of teaching about democracy and democratic values, rather than Shakespeare (which I hated) and religion. I'm a professional educator, and I never hesitate to tell my high school students that I hated Shakespeare, and pretty much still do. But on the other hand, I LOVED Beowulf, which some of the students I work with are currently reading.

I mean, c'mon people--just how tragic is it *really* that our kids don't have a context for Victorian era Christmas songs? As CarolC has pointed out, they have a whole world of cultural knowledge we don't have.

And as to the remarks about the lack of community values in the US vis a vis Europe and Israel, I don't really agree. Despite the fact that many people in the US feel isolated, I think that is most often a conscious lifestyle choice we make when we decide where to live and work, and what we choose to spend our time and energy doing. I have moved around the US a lot in my lifetime (now approaching 50), but I have never felt at a loss for a sense of community because if I can't find a community of kindred spirits, I create one. Preferably a community that takes me out of my comfort zone, and forces me to keep learning about them, rather than perpetually lecturing to others about how great I am (which is what I think people here are doing).