It has only been 12 years, but for her it is already just something in the history books. It will be like Vietnam is for me. Something that changed everything for my era, but yet an event of which I have no firsthand recollection. History experienced is so very different from history learned. I spend most of my waking hours talking to students about things that other people, but neither me nor my students, actually experienced.
I was covering Jamestown recently, and casually tossed out the statistic that one in eight settlers survived the first few winters (or, if you want to reverse that, 7 in 8 did not survive). Thinking about 9/11 is emotional for me when I get to that lesson at the end of the year (I’ve got three days on it, actually). But it is even more emotional I am sure for my friends who were in New York (I experienced 9/11, like most of the country, on television.) But I could talk about the hundreds who perished in Jamestown without any emotion, even make a few “starving time” jokes. Probably wasn’t all that funny to those in Jamestown, though (especially the woman whose husband murdered her and then ate her to sustain him through one of the winters…once he was discovered his fellow colonists burned him at the stake…happy times in Jamestown. from Capt. John Smith's writings: "Now whether she was better roasted, boiled, or [broiled], I know not"). Point of all of this is, I guess, that time and distance can numb almost anything. Scale can also matter, although not in the way that you might think. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes attributed to Stalin that I start one of my lessons with: “one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.” That’s always a great class, the quote bothers some students and sparks good discussion.
But back to 9/11 and distance, it has been interesting that each year my students remember less and less about the day and are more detached from it. When I taught it even three years ago, the students had vivid memories of being in their little elementary classes and teachers crying and great confusion. The emotion of experiencing even that was fresh for them and they still felt some personal ownership in the event, if that is the right term. This crop of students I have were four or five years old on the day, and they remember very little. Next year or the year after, it will only be history to my students, just like it is for my daughters. Like Vietnam or The Great Depression for me. That is sort of sad, but it has been an interesting process to watch year after year.
Not sure where I’m going with all of this, I started out just wanting to comment on a lesson on 9/11 being given to a pre-school class.
Another teaching related thing that was cool, I had just finished teaching about John Winthrop, the Puritans and Massachusetts, and analyzing Winthrop's famous “city upon a hill” sermon as the birth of American exceptionalism. Then Obama gives his Syria speech the other night and closes saying that he does believe that America is “exceptional” (he used the actual word!) and has a special responsibility to the world. Then Putin writes his op-ed/open letter to America piece in the NY Times, and closes with telling us that we are not exceptional at all. Thank you Barack and Vlad for making my lesson relevant! And by the way, it shows just how inept the Obama administration has been on Syria when former KGB thug Vladimir Putin (Chechnya? Georgia, anyone?) can present himself as peacemaker and the U.S. as imperialist aggressor.
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