How are the attacks being taught in schools?
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Cover of a 44-page supplemental textbook published by Cengage Learning. -
Remembering Sept. 11, Lesson 1 from Pearson. -
Remembering Sept. 11, Lesson 2 from Pearson.
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Every year, Robert Hague, a social studies teacher at Quaker Valley High School, offers his students a slide show he assembled out of devastating images from a day that changed history.
In one, an orange fireball erupts as a jetliner strikes the World Trade Center. In another, a mountain of smoke shrouds Lower Manhattan. In yet another, a person hurtles through the air from the center's top floors.
The scenes are forever etched into Mr. Hague's own memory, but he knows that with each passing year, the odds are slimmer that his students will have any firsthand knowledge of Sept. 11, 2001.
"These kids really don't remember, especially the ninth graders," he said. "They were only 3 or 4 years old. And even the 12th graders, if they were in elementary school back then, they probably were not allowed to watch it while it was happening."
As the terror attacks move from current events to history, new challenges and opportunities await educators who must give context to the cataclysm.
On one hand, it's harder now to draw upon shared memories to discuss with students what it was like on that awful day. But the distance also is allowing teachers to broach themes once too raw.
Across the nation, the coming anniversary is spawning heightened interest in deciding what future generations should be taught about the attack itself, the hatred that spawned it and the way America's view of the world changed, from jitters over air travel to polarizing debates about security versus personal freedoms.
In New Jersey, which lost hundreds of its citizens in the attack, officials in July announced that an optional 9/11 curriculum is now available statewide. "From Playground to World Stage: Aggression, Hostility and Terrorism," is among the lesson themes.
PG VIDEO: CLASSROOM VIDEO"Some teachers were saying, 'We don't know how to teach it appropriately to the [different] ages because of the horrific nature of it,'" said Allison Kobus, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Education.
First Published September 4, 2011 12:00 am
