Ways to teach 9/11 vary

If you ask most students and school administrators what kids are learning about 9/11 in schools, the general response is to talk about what they are doing to memorialize the historic day.

Districtwide there will be a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m. Some schools are having assemblies and others are creating tributes to the victims today. But as far as actually teaching kids about 9/11 — what happened, why it happened, and what its effects have been — that’s still a work in progress.

“This is something really important; there is so much to be gleaned from looking at it with a different set of eyes,” said Jennifer Perry, who teaches advanced placement U.S. government and advanced placement world history at Estancia High School. “It was really a sad event, and I think that it shocked the nation the first couple years there. There was a lot of different reactions I try to look at it now as the context of larger events.”

Some parents and students when asked Monday shied away from saying what they think should be taught in schools in relation to 9/11, associating any discussion with the day as turning it into a political debate.

However, as Perry and Tom Antol, district director of curriculum and secondary education pointed out, the circumstances surrounding that day are worth studying.

One 11th grade U.S. history textbook the district uses refers to the attacks as a “watershed moment” in the country, an event that galvanized the country’s efforts to deal with terrorism.

The attacks themselves are only mentioned briefly on two pages, but as Perry explains, the attacks are a seed for discussion.

Perry’s class, like similar ones across the district, will look at the government angle of the attacks. Her class in particular will read three chapters of the “9/11 Commission Report,” and learn about the bureaucracy behind national intelligence, where the commission cites breakdowns, and later the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.

In her AP government class, Perry’s students will examine constitutional rights and how they have been prohibited in times of war or times of heightened national security.

“I want to know why Al Qaeda attacked us,” said Diana Antonio, a senior at Estancia.

There is no easy answer to that question, but today classes are closer to helping kids understand that than they were six years ago.

In the district’s world history classes, the roots of terrorism are being explored in the historical context of religious wars.

“I think 9/11 has different applications and different content settings it can fit across so many content areas in so many ways, from teaching world religion to 1st Amendment rights,” Perry said. “Teaching it started more as a memorialization of the event and more of the shock value. And now we’re better able to analyze those events in the context of a period of history.”

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