Posted on: Sunday, September 12, 2004
COMMENTARY
When teaching students about 9/11, start with empathy
| • | We're winning: Military, political gains show U.S. can win a difficult war |
| • | We're losing: Not knowing reason for attacks ultimately will make us lose |
By Bob Peterson
My current fifth-graders were 7 years old on Sept. 11, 2001. At the beginning of this school year, I asked them what they remembered of that fateful day.
Associated Press One of the hardest ideas for students to understand is why anyone would hate the United States. Teachers should begin examining these complicated issues by encouraging student empathy. It's critical that students are allowed to learn about what life is like for many people in the world.
Why are some children in the world hungry?
Why are some countries poor?
Why do countries go to war?
Because the United States dominates the world in numerous ways, and because this world has grown increasingly perilous, it is the moral and civic responsibility of teachers, professional organizations and schools to promote a rigorous global justice education.
Our students live in a society that makes up about 5 percent of the world's population but consumes about one-third of the world's wealth.
Our government's policies dominate international affairs. The U.S. government refuses to sign international treaties, ranging from child labor and women's rights to global warming and international war crimes.
The United States is the world's top weapons purchaser and exporter. U.S.-based transnational corporations employ millions of people under sweatshop conditions, pollute the environment and move at a whim to increase profit margins.
At the same time, more than 1 billion people do not have any water within a 15-minute walk of their homes, and 2.4 billion people lack basic sanitation. What's worse, nearly 40,000 children age 5 and younger die every day from malnutrition or preventable diseases, according to UNICEF.
All students, starting with the youngest, need to develop empathy for people who are different or who live under different conditions. They need to learn basic geography and history, and they must unlearn damaging stereotypes.
We can help students develop other critical skills: to question the policies of our government, to consider alternatives, to ask about who benefits and who suffers from particular policy choices, and to evaluate media coverage of world events.
We need to direct students' attention to the broad trends that continue to make the world an unequal and dangerous place.
The ability of fundamentalists of all stripes to sustain themselves and gain new recruits rests principally on the widespread despair and oppression that hundreds of millions of people experience daily.
The events of 9/11, and the wars on terrorism and Iraq that have followed, demonstrate that a deep knowledge of global dynamics has become a basic skill. This is the world our students will inherit. They ought to understand it.
Bob Peterson teaches fifth grade in Milwaukee. He wrote this for the Progressive Media Project.
Many recounted vivid images, such as the planes flying into the World Trade Center. Others said the terrorists were from Iraq, and that's why we invaded that country. One student said the Iraq war was a big reason why more people around the world hate the U.S. government.
Firefighters make their way through the rubble after terrorists crashed two airliners into the World Trade Center in a deadly series of blows that brought down the twin 110-story towers in New York City, in this Sept. 11, 2001 photo.
