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National Public Radio
Teaching Sept.
11 To Students Who Were Born After The Attacks Happened
Eric Westervelt
"Never forget" became a national rallying cry after the attacks of
Sept. 11, 2001.
Yet America's schools — where collective memory is shaped — are now
full of students who never knew. Because they weren't alive 15 years
ago. As such, many teachers struggle with whether and how to teach the
attacks and their aftermath.
According to one survey, only about 20 states include anything in depth
about the events of that fateful day in their high school social
studies curriculum.
And when they are taught, critics say, it's often through a narrow lens.
Ask students born after 2001 what they know about the attacks, and many
admit they have big knowledge gaps — gaps that they also want filled in.
"It was a really big part of other peoples' lives. I wasn't born then,"
says Kaylah Eggsware, a seventh-grader at Greenfield Middle School in
Greenfield, Mass. "I don't know about it, so I don't know how to feel
about it."
"I'd like to know exactly, like, everything that happened. Because I
don't know exactly how many planes there were," says Josh Sylvester,
also a seventh-grader at Greenfield Middle School. "I know the two twin
towers fell. But I don't know if anything else happened."
Like a lot of middle schools, Greenfield didn't used to teach much
about that day, let alone the "anything else." Often, the school would
observe a moment of silence at anniversary time and follow with a brief
class discussion.
"We have never really tackled the issue before," says Greenfield
Principal Gary Tashjian.
But that's changing. This school year, Greenfield students as well as
their teachers and administrators are being asked to read and discuss a
new young adult novel called Towers Falling by Jewell Parker Rhodes.
The protagonist is a resilient New York City fifth-grader named Dčja.
In her new school, the towers were once visible from her classroom. Her
family has hit hard times: Her father suffers a host of physical and
mental problems related to the attacks. After the family gets evicted,
it moves into a homeless shelter.
Dčja knows the attacks have cast a shadow over her life, but she
doesn't know much about them. So she and her friends set out to
discover more.
Tashjian hopes the all-school read sparks discussion, debate and
further inquiry among students.
"They can relate right off the bat to many of the things this girl is
going through. Maybe not exactly; maybe I don't have someone who was
affected directly by 9/11. But maybe I have a brother who was in Iraq,"
Tashjian says. "The whole conversation gets a whole lot bigger with
something as simple as a book."
It's not clear how big that conversation will get at Greenfield. The
school is encouraging the entire town to read the novel.
"My first reaction was to say, 'No way, can't go there. It's too
sensitive and parents will give a lot of pushback,' " says Angela
Ruggeri, Greenfield's assistant principal.
But she ultimately changed her mind. Issues of terrorism and its
aftermath come up on the news all time, Ruggeri says. "I started
wondering, what are the conversations parents are having with their
children about this, and how will they approach it?"
Teachers hope the book provides jumping-off points for talking about
the more difficult issues "beyond the events of that one day to really
thinking deeply about what it means to them to be an American citizen,"
says Ashley Fitzroy, a literacy and technology teacher at the school.
The middle school is something of an outlier nationally for starting a
schoolwide conversation. The majority of schools that do "go there"
often focus on the shock and horror of the attacks and the heroism of
the first responders.
"The narrative about 9/11 that students are getting is really
ahistorical," says Cheryl Duckworth. "It has no context. It's very
thin." Duckworth surveyed more than 150 teachers and interviewed
several dozen in depth for her work 9/11 and Collective Memory in US
Classrooms.
Duckworth, a professor of conflict resolution at Florida's Nova
Southeastern University, found that only about 20 states include
content about Sept. 11 in their high school social studies curriculum.
And in about half of those states, she says, the topic is covered in a
mostly cursory way.
A 2011 research paper by the Center for Information & Research on
Civic Learning and Engagement underscored serious shortcomings in
Sept.11 teaching curricula including textbooks with "a startling lack
of detail about what actually happened on 9/11." In addition, the
report found that despite the many contentious issues surrounding the
attacks and the American response, "little was presented in the early
curricula and textbooks as controversial."
The National Council for the Social Studies doesn't track data on how
the attacks are taught in schools or their place in curricula.
Neither does the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.
But the museum says demand has gone way up for its professional
development program for educators on teaching the subject. The
organization has offered seven such sessions in the past two years and
plans to expand in coming months "due to overwhelming response," says
Communications Director Kate Monaghan. It also conducts a weeklong
summer seminar for teachers called "9/11 and American Memory."
Duckworth found that if Sept. 11 is addressed in classrooms, too often
teachers don't want to tackle the complex, often ugly aftermath at home
and globally: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the Patriot Act and
civil liberties; radical Islam and Islamophobia.
"I think it's very disturbing," Duckworth says, "especially during this
presidential election cycle. Islamophobia is just sort of free-floating
out there in the air."
If we don't address Sept. 11 in all its complexity, she says,
stereotypes and misinformation will continue on both sides.
Read this article and more at NPR
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