The conversation went something like

Teacher - "I am going to have to discipline her if she keeps telling the other children Santa isn't real."

Her mother - "Well, he's not, right?"

Teacher - "Well yes but she can't say that"

Her mother - "Well, why don't you talk to the principal, discuss this conversation, and call me back"

That was the end of the story.

It also isn't a matter of belief. If you show me a grown parent that legitimately believes Santa will bring presents to their kids, they'll only be disappointed once. It's a marketing gimmick convenient for parents because it encourages good behaviour. It would be far more useful to not put them through the eventual trauma of realizing it later in life and instead focus on gifting gifts to each other in the spirit of some holiday because they care about each other. Instead we all play a stupid game that involves lying because we're too afraid to be the one who isn't.

What if another family is foreign, and has not such myth or custom? How does that child feel in an environment where the people teaching them are telling them their own parents are lying to them?

Respecting a belief is one thing. Pretending it is true is another.

The ideal thing to do would probably be to tell the teacher/school admin at the beginning of the year that the child knows Santa isn't real and have the teacher pull them aside before the class Xmas party and reaffirm that your kid is so super mature for knowing the truth but since the other kids aren't as grown up as they are, they've gotta keep the secret.

You can definitely not do Santa but also find out ways not to make parenting your kid's friends and classmates difficult (because if you do, other parents will avoid you and you hurt your kid socially!)

We give gifts to each other on other holidays, birthdays, and even for no reason at all. Isn't that a better thing to teach a child to comprehend than a made up sky person who sneaks in your house after dark and who is constantly watching what you do, even while you're asleep?

For instance, I always found it fascinating how the peasant kids always found one another/grouped together whenever there were gatherings of gifted kids or during college programs.

And people are openly suspicious of people moving in directions they shouldn't- in both ways. My mother was a defector from a decently well-off family (they were abusive), and the discomfort people have expressed over the years whenever she drew on her childhood or had more 'high brow' interests than they expected out of a high school dropout who worked in a warehouse is fascinating.

And also, as someone who has talents that are more put to use in careers held by the upper-middle+ class, they are not comfortable with my refusal to disavow my more peasant/'lower' tastes and habits and don't consider them problems. Food is a huge one, for example. They're so assured of their own superiority that the idea that you have no desire to emulate them is baffling.

I think so too: I found this article fake. There is no way the author can be so self-aware and yet so confused.

She knows about a lot of what she doesn't know, and would need to know to be able to do what those around her do. She knows that the routes to obtaining key details are closed to her.

Am I fake?

Like her acquaintances, I imagine I could puzzle out much of it, but in all honesty I would be guessing.

I definitely see this with public school redistricting where I live as the population of some parts of my city surges for apartments while neighborhood housing population stays relatively static.

The anti-redistricting argument seems to be a vague, "this will break up the community". The pro-redistricting argument is naturally that, "this will increase diversity", regardless of how diverse a school district already is. So nobody really discusses the problem head-on.