This post doesn't concern class so much as it is a personal note.
I've noticed on a handful of our blogs mention of 9/11. I was in my sophomore year of college when that event took place. As I read your blogs and notice that some of you were in middle school or high school in 2001, I am prompted to consider an issue relative to our studies and to my future: my future students don't really remember a time that is not post-9/11.
Students who are 16 now were only 8 in 2001. Eight. It's difficult for me to recognize that people who are only a few years younger than I am aren't really cognizant of the flux our culture went through, that they may not remember the kinds of propaganda (commercials, print ads) that immediately followed those attacks, that they probably won't remember the heated debates and in some instances outrage surrounding the Patriot Act (although that's likely to remain one of the most tangible aspects of a post-9/11 U.S. culture), that they may not have a clear memory of being blatantly lied to by their President and government repeatedly over a long period of time, that they won't recognize differences in airport security, that my context for middle Eastern stereotypes - having watched them burgeon - is different than theirs will be.
It seems almost surreal to me that I'll almost certainly find myself explaining my memories to my students to provide them with a context for current events and social outlook. I suppose I just hadn't realized how sizable a gap a few years can make. But I think it is important for all of us who are becoming teachers - elementary, secondary, post-secondary - to remember the importance of context.
Sometimes we view events with different eyes than our students do not because of how or where we were brought up, not because of our moral or political leanings, but because of our memories of recent events, our proximity to them, our ability to clearly recall the social and political atmospheres surrounding those events, and our ability to clearly recall how parts of our culture were affected - our ability to see the waves directly after events like 9/11 and the ripples today.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This is a very interesting point. I was a sophomore in high school when 9/11 happened, and I didn't have much of a concept for what it meant. I am sad to say that I was quite oblivious to world affairs at the time, and it took a couple of years' perspective for me to grasp fully the ramifications. At what age CAN we expect our students to be capable of engaging fully in the world around them?
ReplyDeleteWhat your post indicates to me is how powerful the last few years of history have been -- and the need to get some perspective on that history. How do we help young people gain that perspective? That should be an important question in the book we are working on together.
ReplyDeleteI was a junior in the university when 9-11 happened, and I don't feel that I was equipped to deal with it; I'm not sure it's something that age aids in any way.
ReplyDeleteYour point about pre-and post-9-11 minds is interesting to me though. I happen to be old enough to remember the tail end of the Cold War, and to me, the Cold War was always strange and overly hysteric. However, for those people who are 10-15 years older than me, the Cold War was an entirely different experience. I've talked to professors and classmates who grew up during the 1960s and 1970s that relate a very real fear of the apocalypse and nuclear war that I'm not sure anyone in my generation ever experienced. Will there be a similar gap in our understandings between generations that dovetail around 9-11? In my Cold War example, I feel as though our generation is more hopeful to the future, while the previous generation lost faith in mankind; what will be the effects of 9-11 on those who remember the before versus those who only know the post-9-11 world?