Comments on: Teaching for Change on Sept. 11

By: Newmania

Newmania — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 22:02:14 +0000

[...] Borderland has a good post for teachers and 9/11. Hate and fear walk hand-in-hand. If we hope to make a difference in the world, we need to educate for truth and justice. This is an opportunity to open some important discussions with students about world events and media. [...]

By: Meg

Meg — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 16:05:02 +0000

I hear ya–this is tricky stuff. I’m currently teaching an ESL/education course for teachers of English as a foreign language who are from another country. It’s not easy to handle adults in class with this topic, either. Thanks for the good thoughts, and for the linklove.

By: Bill Kerr

Bill Kerr — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 14:23:15 +0000

I don’t have a problem with the term islamofascism. It accurately describes a real and dangerous phenomenon in our world. I have been using it as a delicious tag for some time, well before the recent use of it by Bush. I wrote some further thoughts about September 11 today on my blog.

By: Doug

Doug — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 13:16:52 +0000

Cynthia, If I had older students I might put the CNN pipleline up up on my LCD, but I hesitate to do it with kids as young as the ones I’m working with. It does have value as background, and I hope we can archive some of it to look at down the road.

Graham, my wife still remembers the phone message I left from my classroom. It was still very early in Alaska - a lot of people weren’t up yet. I turned on the radio while I was getting ready for the day, and I heard a special report about a plane that hit the Trade Center. Then more…and I was - panic isn’t the word, but there was some adrenalin running. I knew nobody was up, and I said to the machine, “Turn on the TV. We’re under attack.”

I think back and wonder about what an odd thing it was to say. In Alaska, we never really felt threatened, except in a political sense.

Now I see threat coming from distortions of the truth, threat to our way of life as our freedoms are compromised in the name of security, threat to the stability of other nations as ours assumes an aggressive colonial posture attempting to export a particular version of Democracy that is ill-suited to translation, threat to people around the world who have to suffer and endure our violence, threat to the well being of military families who are sacrificing loved ones, threat to our sense of who we are and who we could be…

Things are different now.

By: Graham Wegner

Graham Wegner — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 12:09:07 +0000

Our 9/11 school day is over down under and apart from the fact the above mentioned movie “The Path to 9/11″ is about to start on Channel Seven as a prime time event (how will Aussies be able to differentiate between truth and fiction when they watch? Will they care?) the issue didn’t come up. My class were five and six year olds when it happened so it’s still hard to shift Steve Irwin’s death from the front of their consciousness at present. I think back to my reactions at the time - it was so unreal - but it didn’t really impact on my world that much. I do remember Australians in the street saying, “Not here, mate. We’re not important enough.” The events unfolded during our night time and I remember getting up in the morning and finding that all television channels were running coverage of who know’s what - I was busy getting ready for work and Aaron was upset that the children’s programs weren’t on. It wasn’t until I got to school and spoke to some colleagues who had stayed up watching late night TV who put me in the picture. Anyway, I hope your day goes well - I can’t appreciate what it means for Americans but I can empathise.