For example, don't we share a society governed by a formal Law based on the formal Decalogue (Ten Commandments) ? Civil Rights derived from the universal declaration of human rights etc ?
In both, murder is evil, jealousy and greed are sins, charity is a virtue and your neighbour is your brother... no ?
Those are characteristics that are common in many human societies. Every civilized country has formal laws, and generaly those laws evolve from the basic morality of religious belief and custom. The universal declaration of human rights is pre-dated by many legal and political systems that were designed to protect the rights of the citizens, though historically there has frequently been narrow definitions of who possessed such rights.
A culture is an accumulation of shared experiences. You have to look at the history of a country, to see how it was built; where its people came from; what internal and external issues they had to deal with; what wars they fought; who their traditional friends and enemies are; the basis of their economy; and many more shaping factors.
Consider just the building of railroads. The countries in Europe, and North America built ralroads in the 19th century. For Americans this phase of history was a opening of vast new lands, wars with native peoples, and massive immigration to populate the new lands. They had a completely different set of challenges than those the Europeans faced.
The Americans had a period of huge economic development based on slave labor, and slavery was a central issue in the civil war they fought. They fought a war with Mexico, the Spanish-American war and twice fought wars with the British. In the first world war they were late to come and really had to be forced in. Similarly in World War II they remained technically a nuetral while supplying the allied side. They did not declare war on Germany until after the were attacked by the Japanese.
They have never been overrun by an attacking enemy like most European countries have. They have more ethnic diversity than European countries.
They have some unique shared experiences that no other nation has. The U. S. A. is the only country in the world that has visited the moon; used the atomic bomb in a war; and won the superbowl.
That last part is not humor. Sports are an important part of shared culture and there is a huge difference in what sports are popular in North America and elsewhere.
It is a unique culture. It is still a young and evolving culture, but it is distinct from any European culture that has contributed to shaping it, just as it is distinct from African and Asia cultures that have contributed it.
That does not mean that there cannot be some shared values and ideas, but it does mean that you cannot apply European standard to judge the value of something that is part of the American culture.
<education issues>
I am quite a bit older than both of you; class of '65. The issues you present are not new. It has nothing directly to do with immigration; though that can add to the problem. Apathey among students has a direct correlation with the economic demographic. The attitude of not wanting to be the "smart kid" was common in the 50s and 60s when I was going to school; and even extended into university. Everyone wanted to be average; part of the crowd; unnoticed.
What has change since then; atleast in my country, is the very negative approach not labelling failures; dumbing things down; so the parents are not embarassed by the poor performance. For those who actually want to learn there are opportunities for "enriched" learning experiences. However that get criticized because it favors kids in the higher economic brackets where there is more motivation to learn.
Politically is is a minefield. Provincial governments who have tried to go stougher standards run into a firestorm from parents, who do not want to have their kid labelled a failure, and from the teachers, because the will actually have to teach instead of just passing out pre-printed notes (the teaching version of Google links).
One of the reason that it is difficult to rise from lower economic situations is that the systems in many advance countries do not encourage teh poor to acquire the skills to get out of poverty, but instead teach them that they can get a free ride by whining; and they will get rich playing the lottery.
</education issues>
