Holidays are a big part of elementary and secondary schools. In the article "Quantity Matters: Annual Instructional Time in an Urban School System" by BetsAnn Smith (Ed Admin Quarterly 36:5), she studies 8 elementary schools in Chicago and finds that of the 280 available time, and average of 23% is used for noninstructional activities--"more productive teachers" only use 14% (p. 662). By the way, noninstructional time included test days. I can send you the pdf of the article if you email me!
Critical literacy, or information literacy, can be learned through the researching of holidays in high school or college to complicate their understanding of the holiday, perhaps challenging their assumptions about national holidays. Every semester, I have pairs pick a holiday and research it online. I found that if you include the word "controversy" with the holiday in a Google search, for example, students can find more than the "simple" version of the holiday. They present a discussion from multiple perspectives on the online class discussion board--about Labor Day, Columbus Day, Yom Kippur etc.
Please share with me other information literacy activities!
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