“The most important thing to remember when presenting 9/11 to students of any age, Stout and Loisel agreed, is sensitivity . . .
“Age-appropriateness is stressed at all levels, Stout said, and teachers are strongly encouraged to limit the use of graphic or violent images in the classroom.
“Christine Aragon, a ninth- and 10th-grade American history and government teacher at Mt. Hebron High School in Ellicott City, said she’ll use before and after images of Ground Zero and the Pentagon, but that’s it.” -Teaching a tragedy: Sept. 11 in schools
Figuring out how to teach 9/11 has been a growing process in the last 10 years. I was in school on September 11, 2001 and the teacher struggled to explain terrorism to a room full of 10 year olds. I was suprised to find in discussions since then that a lot of schools didn’t breech the topic at all.
Fourth graders and up were informed about the attacks at my school and they did so with varying levels of success. Since then, we covered 9/11 every year. In 8 or 9th grade, I first saw the footage of the people jumping out of the twin towers. There was less sensitivity, I think, because we lived through it and because it was still so fresh in everyone’s mind.
I tend to forget that children in elementary school and high school don’t remember Sept. 11. As shocking as the violent images and tragic stories were to me, I can only imagine their impact on children who were not there when the events took place. I guess that September 11, 2001 is now an official part of history.
Children will grow up only seeing before and after photos much like I grew up only hearing stories about the Kennedy assassination and other tragedies that happened in my families’ lifetimes. I can only feel a unattached sort of sorrow when I hear their stories. The children of today will be the same about 9/11. It’s a natural progression of moving on.
I imagine that teachers will struggle, as there is a sort of catharsis in reliving the day that everything changed. The students of today need to understand the gravity of what happened, and I’m not sure if they will just seeing before and after photos.
via Current Events.
It’s surprising that Schools are not teaching schools about something as important as 9/11, which changed the lives of Americans and American society. I understand this maybe a touchy subject, but it is something that children should understand before it completely fades out of memory. If the next generation knows nothing about an event and its importance it will fade out of memory going down in their minds as “just another bad day.” I regret my teachers withholding the events of 9/11 from me cause thinking back i am embarrassed to only realize and understand what it was years later. 9/11 was a tragic event that changed lives, while difficult to teach efforts should still be made.
I think it’s a struggle for them to know what to teach. I definitely think the kids should be made aware but at a certain age. They should be able to understand what happened, why it happened, and how it relates to their lives today. Most elementary students aren’t going to fully understand that. Also some of the images from the day are too gruesome to be shared with younger kids.
Even if the students do not fully understand, it is better we tech it to them bit by bit the same as we teach history. As they get older they will already have an idea and will be mature enough to fully grasp the concept of what happened. It’s a difficult task but something that must be taught.
[...] Interaction: The class as a whole is assigned to the same chapters or topics when posting on out blog. For me, never really blogging before, helps me greatly. This gives me, the inexperienced blogger, to see simple things like structure of the blogs as well as seeing the types of information they find most important to include. As today makes the tenth anniversary for the tragic event of September eleventh, I reflect upon the events and realize how young, innocent, and ignorant on the subject. http://blogs.setonhill.edu/abbeyfleckenstein/2011/09/09/the-tenth-anniversary/ When looking t other’s post information on the event, it grew apparent that Katelyn has the same view as me, wanting the event to be taught in schools to show young children what happened. http://blogs.setonhill.edu/sny6456/2011/09/09/teaching-911-changes-as-kids-dont-remember/ [...]
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[...] this section we are not simply leaving a comment, but having a dialogue over the subject matter. On Katie’s Blog we talked about 9/11 and whether it should be taught to children. We discussed the difficulty of [...]