Actually, it is being driven by a secularist society that has replaced God with government. Restore faith in God and people will stop expecting the government to provide cradle to grave solutions. Our currency still reads: "In God we trust", even if only a few of us still believe and practice that faith.
As long as it doesn’t open the door for Islamic radicals to start demanding the teaching of Islam, I personally have no problem with crucifixes in schools. The EU is way ahead of us in terms of Muslims integrating into the population and I’m always wary of giving them a loophole to preach their “religion of peace”. Anything that can be done to keep Sharia law out of Western Civilization is a small price to pay.