Teaching tragedy is no easy thing. It’s a careful balancing act between emotion and analysis, and it’s always a difficult compromise. Since September 2011, New Jersey has officially included 9/11 as part of the state curriculum. The New Jersey plan is a conventional one; it stresses human loss, using a wide array of resources to present the emotional aspects of 9/11. The teacher guidelines include tips on how to help students who have been directly affected by 9/11 or have some other personal trauma that resonates particularly with the attack on New York. It presupposes an emotional connection, and seeks to foster such a connection if one is found to be lacking. In short, the New Jersey curriculum is exactly the kind of 9/11 education we need to be moving away from.
Surprising as it may sound, for the majority of junior high school students 9/11 is history. It may not have taken place before they were born, but it is history in an emotional sense—they simply do not associate with it. For all practical purposes, the events of 9/11 are for them what Pearl Harbor was for my parents’ generation, or what the fall of the Berlin Wall or end of the Cold War was for mine: politically and historically essential, but devoid of any emotional attachment. Indeed, today’s 18 year-olds are probably the youngest to really remember September 11, 2001 for what it was. Even then, many of those memories are likely vague and shallow, nothing like the poignant recollections of those who lived through 9/11 as adults.
The educational legacy of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War is perhaps one of the most powerful examples of the consequences that can arise from a distorted presentation of modern history. Arab and Israeli accounts of the circumstances leading to the battle, not to mention the war itself, differ so profoundly that textbooks written by one group or the other are hopelessly contradictory. In Hebrew it is known as Milkhemet Ha’atzma’ut, “War of Independence,” while in Arabic it is called al-Nakba, “The Catastrophe.” After 65 years, the 1948 war still inspires emotion in the youths of both groups. Moreover, though the 1948 war was the first in a series of events that comprise the Arab-Israeli conflict, the way it is taught has prevented either group from moving on.
Today, even recognizing that there is disagreement has emotional undertones. It was as recently as 2007 that the Israeli government allowed for elementary textbooks in Arab schools in Israel to include the fact that many Arabs call the war a catastrophe. The decision was a controversial one that was slammed by the Israeli right as being anti-Zionist. The addition was not extended to other Israeli schools. The Palestinian curriculum, in contrast, does not address the issue of the “Palestinian narrative” of the 1948 war until late in the high school years, a curriculum point absent until 1994, when previously strict content standards were relaxed. As a result of those standards, oral history has played a strong role, creating an education arguably more emotionally poignant than what any textbook could provide. The result is that young people from both groups are emotionally tied to a war that occurred a generation before they were born, and which hinders meaningful progress today.
The way we teach 9/11 matters because it is too easy to simplify the terrible things done that day into the familiar story of the good guys going after the bad guys, and our ends justifying our means. We want students to be critical thinkers, to analyze the choices our country has made even in its darkest hour. Admittedly, our students need an education that acknowledges human loss, yes, but they also need one that focuses more clearly on the effects of 9/11. Moving forward, the historical significance of 9/11 is not only the tragedy and unity that the families of the victims, New York City, and really all of the United States suffered. The legacy of 9/11 will also lie in the American actions it prompted: the beginning of the War on Terror, the redefining of both international relations, and indeed, of security itself.
The implications of 9/11 in both American domestic and foreign policy are so profound, that teaching only, or even mostly, the human aspect is a disservice to our children. If we, as American citizens who lived through 9/11 and everything that followed, engage with 9/11 in only mourning our loss, and praising our sacrifice, we deny ourselves the benefit of hindsight. The objective clarity we need to debate security versus freedom and the way we fight the “War on Terror”, come at the cost of recognizing that our first reactions were not always the right ones. The trajectory of American policy, foreign and domestic, is complex enough without passing the emotional baggage of 9/11 on to the next generation of leaders.
Image credit: neareaststudies.as.nyu.edu
