Who are Public Schools For?

Imagine a first grade student who recently moved to this country.

Maybe they are Russian. Maybe their family is secular. Maybe they are Orthodox. Maybe religion is something quiet in their home, or complicated, or simply not talked about very much. They walk into school eager and curious, wanting to belong.

October comes. The classroom fills with Halloween costumes, decorations, and excitement. At home, this child may hear that Halloween is strange or confusing, or simply not something their family participates in. Some Russian families choose to keep their children home that day. Not out of anger. Not out of protest. Just uncertainty. Just difference.

December comes. Christmas songs. Christmas crafts. Christmas stories. Everyone seems to know what is happening. The words. The symbols. The rhythm of the joy.

This child learns a few quiet lessons early. They learn that school has a version of “normal.” They learn that belonging sometimes means understanding things that are not explained to them. They learn that some parts of their family’s story live more comfortably at home than at school.

They may still feel safe. They may still like school. But a small message settles in early. This place was not built with their family fully in mind. That lesson lasts longer than any holiday.

When stories like this are shared, someone often responds with a familiar refrain: That’s just life in the United States. Learning the dominant culture is part of belonging. It’s not harmful. It’s just reality.

And it’s true that learning to live in a shared society always involves adaptation. Public schools are not meant to shield children from difference or from the fact that they live in a majority culture. But there is a meaningful difference between learning about the world as it is and being quietly taught which stories matter most.

Public schools are at their best when they help children encounter the world as it actually is: layered, diverse, and full of perspectives that do not always match their own. That does not require removing books or traditions that matter deeply to some families. And it does not mean asking children to leave who they are at the door. It means being clear about the difference between personal meaning and public responsibility.

Public schools do not exist to center any one family’s traditions, including those held by the majority. They exist to widen the circle so that many stories are visible, valued, and learned from. When classrooms include a range of voices, histories, and ways of being, children learn something essential: that their own experience matters, and so does everyone else’s.

This is not about celebrating everything. In practice, trying to mark every holiday often reinforces the same familiar ones while others remain misunderstood or invisible. Inclusion is not about imitation or accumulation. It is about balance, context, and intention.

Respect does not require adopting another community’s rituals. Appreciating someone else’s joy does not mean replacing your own. Children are capable of learning that people celebrate differently, believe differently, and still belong together. Difference does not need to be feared, erased, or forced on anyone.

Somewhere along the way, many of us forgot what public education is really for. Not because educators stopped caring. Not because schools lost their heart. Not because families suddenly became unreasonable or difficult. But because over time, familiarity began to feel like neutrality, and tradition began to feel like entitlement. Slowly and quietly, the line between public and personal blurred.

Public education was created as a shared civic promise: that schools would belong to all of us, not by flattening difference, but by refusing to rank it. It asks something honest and sometimes uncomfortable of all of us, including educators: to hold our own identities with pride while remembering that the classroom is not an extension of any one home.

When we do this well, no child is asked to disappear. And no child is taught that belonging requires leaving themselves behind. That is not about taking something away. It is about remembering who public schools are for.