Photo by Sydney Cromwell.
Spain Park social studies teacher Richard Stamper holds an example of a political cartoon he uses as a tool when teaching about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and their influence on modern American culture.
Every American adult remembers where they were on Sept. 11, 2001.
Spain Park teacher Richard Stamper recalls watching the Twin Towers fall on his classroom TV. But now, the kids in his history classroom were only infants, or weren’t even alive, when it happened.
Sixteen years after the tragedy of 9/11, history teachers are changing the way they teach about that day. Teenagers who were born in 2001 are now able to get their driver’s license, and Stamper said his social studies students no longer share in the collective memories that are so vivid for people even just a few years older than them.
“It’s strange that we’ve got kids coming up the pipeline now that were all born after 9/11, and it’s not lost on any of us,” said Stamper, who has taught for 11 years at Spain Park and is the social studies department head. “Five years after 9/11, it wasn’t hard to talk about 9/11 because the kids knew it.”
It isn’t a unique phenomenon. Stamper recalls the evolution of teaching about the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, as kids born after the fall of the Berlin Wall entered school. Before that, he said the Vietnam War had a similar change from personal memories and experiences to something confined to history textbooks.
“When that happens, you find yourself having to clarify and actually help kids understand the material,” Stamper said. “Time also tends to make people forget.”
That means in the last few years, Stamper has seen more secondhand information and vague understanding of 9/11 from his students. He said they don’t always understand when and why the U.S. began military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“You wouldn’t think that they would be so confused … [that] they’d have this level of misunderstanding,” Stamper said. “It’s nice to be able to clarify that historical time period.”
Stamper said he also sees a lot of unfamiliarity with the origins of fundamentalism and religious extremism in the Middle East.
“For them, someone like Osama bin Laden or Al-Qaeda – those are vague concepts for them,” Stamper said. “For people who lived through that … people of a certain age, we all know exactly who that person is or that organization.”
This makes 9/11 a unique teaching opportunity compared to the rest of the history curriculum.
When Spain Park holds a moment of silence on Sept. 11 and when they reach modern history in the textbook, Stamper said he takes advantage of that time to make sure his students understand the events of 9/11 and their impact on U.S. politics and culture throughout their lifetime. He also shares photos from that day as a way of starting conversations.
“I always use that day, no matter where we’re at in the curriculum,” Stamper said.
He also encourages his students to continue the conversation at home.
“You can address what happened in 9/11 during class and we try to tell them to go home and ask their parents about it,” he said. “Anybody who was around during 9/11, there’s a very good chance they’re going to remember exactly where they were and what happened.”
