Our national amnesia
Most schools are not teaching about terror
ONCE, the people of our traumatized nation cried out, in unison — “Never forget!’’ Now, 20 years after 9/11, we’re suffering from a case of willful, mass amnesia. Never forget? Pretty soon, we’ll be lucky if there’s anyone left to remember the day Islamic butchers crashed four planes into the heart of our country, leaving a trail of chaos, murder and so many tears. Because in large swaths of this nation, the woke folks in charge have chosen to discard memories of the darkest day in American history. And it frightens me.
Only 14 states — 14! — have mandated classroom instruction about the terror attacks of 9/11. On the honor roll is a jumble of places, only some scorched by terror: Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and New York.
But in most of this country, including big states like California and small ones down to Rhode Island, there exists no requirement that instructors say one word about 9/11.
Even governments in New Jersey and Connecticut, two states that lost a large number of people who came to work in New York’s fallen World Trade Center, have not seen fit to require that all schoolkids learn why some parents or grandparents failed to come home one day in September.
Nor are there mandated 9/11 lessons in Pennsylvania, where a downed jet crashed into a field, killing everyone aboard.
The result is that kids not yet born on that day are likely to stare blankly at any mention of the date. Given the opportunity to impart lessons on terrorism in the classrooms, many schools, school districts or individual teachers choose to opt out, or simply gloss over the subject each year as 9/11 rolls around.
Surveys are few, but a 2017 analysis of high-school social-studies classes in the 50 states and the District of Columbia found that 26 specifically mentioned the 9/11 attacks, nine obliquely mentioned terrorism or the war on terror and 16 didn’t mention the Sept. 11 atrocities at all. Even in the best of circumstances, that’s not a lot of instruction on a crucial topic. How can this be? Some educators and parents I’ve talked with complain that today’s halls of learning have devolved into temples of wokeness, where the very mention of terrorism sparks fears that schools could be seen as pushing Islamophobia.
“It’s just easier to stick your head in the sand rather than teach American history,’’ said one Jersey educator, who just wants to make it to retirement.
It’s despicable. But can any of us really blame her?