As Anniversary of 9/11 Looms, Can We Teach It in Schools?

At the start of the school year and the 10th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2011, teachers are wondering how to address the issue with their students.

Many teachers address 9/11 as part of United States history, while others want to commemorate the anniversary with their students. And there are teachers out there who are hesitating, wondering how to teach about 9/11 in an appropriate and meaningful way, or whether to mention it at all, writes Holly Epstein Ojalvo at the New York Times.

Pamela Moran and Ira David Socol believe that there is a sense that politics in many nations, especially the United States, has become angrier and more divided.

“As parents and teachers we might want to avoid 9/11 for a lot of reasons — social-emotional, cultural, religious and political. But is avoidance the right choice for our young people? We need to ask ourselves how our own beliefs and dispositions color perspectives on how to approach 9/11 with students.”

Pamela Moran is the superintendent of Albemarle County Public Schools in Virginia and president of the Virginia Association of School Superintendents. Ira David Socol, a graduate student in the College of Education at Michigan State University, consults on curriculum and use of space in schools.

As students begin to investigate the stories of 9/11, 10 years after it occurred, they can benefit from critical learning strategies to explore not just those events, but much more importantly, how history is constructed and why, write Moran and Socol.

“Indeed, they must.”

They say that our students cannot continue to learn history simply by recalling dates and names of leaders.

“That form of sanitized school history has too often produced a public unable to critique politically motivated revisions of history. It is also not enough to present “two sides to a story.” Rather, our students must learn how to look deeply and critically into multidimensional stories that are the building blocks of our shared understanding of history.”

“Learners who realize that history occurs chronologically but is best understood conceptually become historians for a lifetime. They are intrigued by the connections and relationships of historic events and realize there’s more to history than dates, places and names in a book or on a test. They seek history’s stories and pass those stories on to the next generation. They learn that history emerges from the people who populate these stories and is brought forward by those who document and tell those stories. They ask questions.”

Moran and Socol say that must engage our young people in the construction of history.

“Sept. 11, 2001, subject to multiple forms of “telling” almost since the day itself, is an important place to initiate this work since the events of that day have become so essential to Americans and their relationships to their own government and the world.”

In remembering 9/11 on its 10th anniversary, we provide learners in 2011 with an opportunity to research the stories and write their own history of this horrific event. In doing so, they will remind us why it’s important we all remember, write Moran and Socol.