The View from Here: Teaching 9/11 will be difficult
When I scanned a school annual last year, I unintentionally found something written at the back that shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did.
Among the reflections of the year and under the category “things that happened this year,” it simply said that terrorists attacked our country. Encrypted in the not-yet-perfected penmanship and incorrect spelling of an elementary school student, my heart sank, in part because it said so much more than that.
There was nothing written about making friends, learning new things or going new places. It was just a simple explanation of an event, undated in that entry.
I briefly wondered if anything else at all that was significant had happened last year and began to worry to myself. Was this all the kid remembered? Wasn’t there anything else to highlight?
Of course there was more. But it was more clear to me than ever the impact of Sept. 11 on all of us. And recent debates concerning tips on how to teach the history of that day in schools brought to mind this parental discovery of the yearbook. They know – boy do they ever – and it was bigger to them than we thought it was.
It sounds simple enough to advise telling the truth in an age-appropriate, security-minded manner, and to do that (from just a parental perspective since I’m not a teacher) seems relatively easy. It’s answering the inevitable “why” that makes it difficult.
Debating isolationism versus the global economy and global policies and describing when the United States got involved and more so, why, seems more fitting for a high school civics class or for a freshman in political science class than for children a decade younger.
Debating religion and man’s interpretation of it as it has changed over time and how it varies across the oceans seems equally fitting for a college course in exploring religion. Debating why people would kill themselves in order to achieve a socio-political ideal that varies vastly from our own culture seems even beyond the public school realm.
If it was difficult to explain the events of Sept. 11 even as they unfolded on live television and then were replayed over and over again on the nightly news, it’s not surprising there is disagreement about how it should go down in the history books.
This brings to mind a photograph I saw while visiting the Midwest three days after the attacks — a photograph of a man jumping out of the World Trade Center that I hadn’t seen before.
My long-time friend showed me that picture and simply said, “This is what really bothers me.” I hadn’t seen her since the last time one of those other friends who wrote furiously in our own high school annuals got married. Nothing had changed except for distance as far as our friendship, but everything had changed in the world.
The picture provoked a reaction I couldn’t explain.
It was anger mixed with shock, fear and disgust, more so than what I had been watching on TV. That’s the real truth of those events to those who didn’t directly experience them.
To be the lone entry in an annual for 2001 is not far from comprehension, but if we think about it long enough, it’s a little more disheartening than that.
We got on airplanes, went places and bought things as we were advised and as we could. But the truth is, when the terrorists attacked, they not only stole almost 3,000 lives, but pecked away at our children’s innocence, which they are keenly aware of, and I want it back.
(Amy Satterwhite is a reporter for the Standard. She can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at [email protected].)