This summer, teachers gathered for three days at the Flight 93 National Memorial in remote western Pennsylvania to talk about 9/11.
What’s the best way to tell a new generation about the attacks that happened 25 years ago? Which parts are suitable for small children? What do the victims’ families want students to say about the victims?
“Even worse than getting the start wrong or using profanity is missing the story altogether,” Gordon Felt, whose brother Edward Felt died on United Airlines Flight 93 on Sept. 11, told teachers in one class. “This is our greatest fear.”
Teaching about 9/11 in schools is more important than ever now that about a third of Americans were born after al-Qaeda hijackers crashed planes and killed nearly 3,000 people in New York City, the Pentagon and rural Shanksville, Pennsylvania. A growing majority of states (at least 40) expect or expect public schools to address 9/11 in some way, but provisions vary widely in scope, specificity and language, The Associated Press found.
State educational standards range from detailed course content to broad concepts. As a result, some do not specify what to teach about 9/11.
A decade after the attacks, about 60% of states did not explicitly mention 9/11 in their education standards, but over time there has been more movement toward teaching about the event and the attacks have come to be seen as an “established event,” said University of Wisconsin education professor Jeremy Stoddard. He, now-retired Dean Diana Hess and his colleagues have spent decades researching 9/11 education.
“For those states that include it, it looks like it will be much deeper than in the past,” Stoddard said.
States vary in how they teach about 9/11.
Twenty-five states have laws or education standards that require or expect public schools to teach specifically about the Sept. 11 attacks, and another 13 states have optional references to Sept. 11, according to data compiled by the AP. Several other states have laws requiring or recommending school policies, bringing the number of states with some kind of policy to at least 40. In states without specific laws or standards, schools and teachers also have discretion to discuss assault.
The AP compiled its data through requests to all states, reviews of standards in four states that did not respond, and interviews with legislators and other officials.
Although states may be interested in teaching about 9/11, their approaches vary.
In Alabama, 9/11 corresponds to “United States military involvement in international conflicts since 1980” for fifth graders. Texas presents 9/11 and related events as an example of “radical Islamic terrorism” and a key moment in modern history overall.
Colorado suggests that high school students might analyze the effects of 9/11, including “Middle Eastern discrimination.” New Mexico faces discussions that could include not only wars and post-9/11 laws, but also the U.S. detention of alleged enemy combatants at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba and the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.
States’ classroom lessons don’t always align neatly with their political views. States as politically diverse as California, Florida, New Jersey and North Dakota invite or expect students to discuss post-9/11 efforts to balance national security and civil liberties, for example.
But revisions of the social sciences that reflect conservative priorities tend to include 9/11. Florida’s 2023 law even mandates that some middle and high school courses devote 45 minutes to 9/11.
The Louisiana Freedom Frame, created in 2022 after conservative complaints about an earlier draft, begins mentioning 9/11 in second grade.
“We came together around our belief that 9/11 needed to be included in the curriculum in a very real way,” Louisiana State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley said by phone this spring. He hopes students will understand that “the threats to our freedom are real, but I think we as Americans are quite strong when we stand together and face these adversities.”
A 2022 Arizona law required 9/11 “age-appropriate education” in all public schools — until lawmakers moved it back to grades seven through 12 last year. “We must protect young children from the true horror of 9/11 and ensure that older children never forget it,” said state Sen. John Kavanaugh, a Republican who sponsored the first measure and supported both.
In Congress, Rep. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., proposed a resolution calling on all states to inform students about the attacks.
Teacher training with students
According to a recent Pew Research Center survey of about 250 adults born after 2000, about 60% of young people in the United States say they first learned about terrorist attacks in school.
When Megan Jones became director of education at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in 2014, teachers told her they were worried about bringing up traumatic memories in students. Now students often need basic facts, and teachers are reconciling their own painful memories with a reality in which students see Sept. 11, 2001, as distant history.
The key is “helping them understand how 9/11 ultimately shaped the world they live in,” Jones said. This year, New York Memorial raised more than $25 million to expand student field trips, teacher training and other educational programs.
In June, the Flight 93 Memorial brought 40 teachers from Pennsylvania to its site in hopes of encouraging more 9/11 education, said organizer Donna Gibson, executive director of the Friends of Flight 93 National Memorial.
Fifth grade teacher Martha “Marty” Ranzer set out to research a subject with personal significance. The former United Airlines flight attendant wears her old wing pin every Sept. 11, tells her West Chester students about her fallen colleagues and highlights how everyday people — like the passengers on Flight 93 and the crew members who tried to wrest control from the 9/11 hijackers — have become “everyday superheroes.”
John Boston Bradley, on the other hand, has no memory of 9/11. The 28-year-old social studies teacher told his students at Johnstown Catholic High School about the attacks, but he said the memorial symposium inspired him to convey more of the “human, emotional aspect.”
“This will help our students understand that these difficult stories need to be told,” he said.
How children see 9/11
“Why did they want to crash into us?” 9-year-old Desmond Killian asked his parents as they toured the 9/11 Memorial Plaza in New York City on a recent afternoon.
“It’s hard to talk about,” Father Eric Killian responded.
Desmond took this into account and then asked, “Which country?”
“It wasn’t so much the country,” Eric Killian said.
The questions kept coming from a fourth-grader who said he had heard the term “9/11” from friends but had not yet been taught it in a California school. The state encourages all public schools to observe a moment of silence and encourages high schools to discuss the impact of the attacks on U.S. politics and world affairs.
Another visitor, 17-year-old New Jersey high school student Ameya Williams, learned a lot about 9/11, from missing warning signs before the attacks to recovering from them.
Her state requires such instruction in public high schools and encourages earlier, age-appropriate instruction. Williams also heard stories from relatives, including her grandfather, who was on his way to work at New York’s World Trade Center when it was struck.
“I think understanding that is understanding what they went through,” Williams said.
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Associated Press writers Mark Levy in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and David A. Lieb in Jefferson City, Missouri, contributed to this report.