Do American Schoolkids Need 9/11 Education?
In Shira Engelhart's 4th grade class in Virginia, students asked why the pilots on the plane didn't just say "no" to the hijackers on 9/11. In his journal, an elementary school student offered a possible explanation that the attacks were perpetrated by German soldiers during the period when there were frequent wars between the U.S. and Germany. When Ms. Engelhart asked her class what happened on 9/11, eight out of 24 of her students knew that something bad occurred but were not sure what, while the rest of her class did not know the day is significant. Some students responded that it was their sibling's or parent's birthday. Elyse Ross, a teacher in New York City, said her school did nothing to commemorate or educate the students about the day. Michael Volodarsky, who worked as a tour guide at the Ground Zero Museum Workshop said he guided a group of fourth graders; about half of the group knew definitively that 9/11 was a terrorist attack that killed thousands of people and the remainder of the group had either vaguely heard of it or did not know of it at all.
The September 11th Education Trust announced the launch of a trial curriculum to be tested this year. The curriculum includes various lesson plans, videos, interactive exercises that includes utilizing Google Earth to locate global terrorism. Relatives of victims provide video testimonials, as do Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The curriculum will be tried in New York City, California, New Jersey, Alabama, Indiana, Illinois and Kansas. The primary purpose of the curriculum is teach about the 9/11 attacks in historical and present day terms. The Trust provides a range of material from enough for a few class sessions to a whole semester's curriculum.
However, Ms. Engelhart wonders whether such attention is really so necessary: "The thing about this event is--what's the purpose of teaching it to our children? What do we want them to take out of it? That there are mean people out there who don't like us and who take their anger out the wrong way? It's not a very teachable moral that we need to focus on. I think it's a historical event that changed America and every child should know what happened, but there is no need for 'drilling' it into such young children. I think that would just be drilling negativity and fear into them. We need to figure out a teachable lesson and what our intentions are when teaching about 9/11."...
Read entire article at The Atlantic
The September 11th Education Trust announced the launch of a trial curriculum to be tested this year. The curriculum includes various lesson plans, videos, interactive exercises that includes utilizing Google Earth to locate global terrorism. Relatives of victims provide video testimonials, as do Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The curriculum will be tried in New York City, California, New Jersey, Alabama, Indiana, Illinois and Kansas. The primary purpose of the curriculum is teach about the 9/11 attacks in historical and present day terms. The Trust provides a range of material from enough for a few class sessions to a whole semester's curriculum.
However, Ms. Engelhart wonders whether such attention is really so necessary: "The thing about this event is--what's the purpose of teaching it to our children? What do we want them to take out of it? That there are mean people out there who don't like us and who take their anger out the wrong way? It's not a very teachable moral that we need to focus on. I think it's a historical event that changed America and every child should know what happened, but there is no need for 'drilling' it into such young children. I think that would just be drilling negativity and fear into them. We need to figure out a teachable lesson and what our intentions are when teaching about 9/11."...