9/11 now is a history lesson, not a memory, for today's high school students
Matthew Mosley has never known a world where he didn't have to take his shoes off at the airport or measure his liquids into 3-ounce containers to get on a plane. Meredith Nyborg has never known an America that is not at war. Mike Stanford has never felt shocked by a terrorist attack because now it seems they are in the news so often. Brooke Wilson has never known a Sept. 11 when her class didn't stop for a moment of silence to commemorate a tragedy she doesn't remember.
These four seniors at Prospect High School in Mount Prospect are part of a new generation of young people who were either too young to remember or not yet born when the largest terrorist attack on American soil happened 15 years ago.
While they know what happened was awful, the emotion of the day is hard to grasp.
It's on our minds, but not in our hearts,” Mosley said. “We weren't glued to the TV. We weren't wondering if our city was going to be hit next. When we watch videos, it always seems to affect the adults more. For us, it's a history lesson. For them, it's reliving a traumatic event.”
“I don't remember when I learned about it; you just kind of always knew it happened,” Nyborg said. “It wasn't until we were older that we learned more details, like how many planes there were or how many people died.”
For an older generation of Americans, the details of 9/11 - the moment the second plane hit, watching the towers collapse into rubble, seeing smoke rising from the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania - are seared in their minds, something that can never be forgotten.
On that morning of Sept. 11, Jay Renaud sat right where the students are today. He was a freshman at Prospect and first heard about a plane hitting a building in New York while he was on his way to Gary Judson's social studies class.
He watched the morning's events unfold on TV in class and instantly knew it was a different kind of school day.
“I remember the whole day being very ominous, very quiet. There was this fear that Chicago might be hit next,” Renaud said. Soccer practice after school was canceled, and he remembers silence on the streets as he walked home. “It was a nice day, but there were no cars. It was just quiet.”
Today, Renaud teaches history at Prospect alongside his former teacher, Judson, now the department head.
“We didn't know what was going on. We were trying to figure it out at the same time as the students,” Judson said.
Fellow teacher Jason Cohen is a New York native. He remembers trying to reach people back home while managing a class of confused teenagers. One student's mother was a flight attendant leaving from Boston that morning.
“She was inconsolable because there was no contact and we didn't know what was going on,” Cohen said.
Laura Collins, who now works in student services at Prospect, was a sophomore at the time. She was downstairs on an elliptical machine during gym class. The televisions in the weight room were already on, but muted.
“All kinds of images were on the screens and suddenly someone turned the volume on and we just stopped where we were,” Collins said.
Every new headline on TV became a teachable moment. There were new terms like “Osama bin Laden” and “al-Qaida,” a geography lesson of lower Manhattan, and discussions of modern Middle East politics.
“Each day there was something new. There were a lot more questions than answers,” Cohen said.
Now, when a terrorist attack occurs in a place like Boston or San Bernardino, students might bring it up in class, but it doesn't permeate the entire school the way it did on 9/11.
“People in my classes were in full-blown tears. I just remember feeling completely shocked and didn't know how to react,” Collins said.
It was the most defining memory she has from all of high school. “No one talked in the passing period. There was a creepy, eerie feeling in the hall,” she said.
Today's seniors might glance at their phones between class and see news of a new terrorist attack, then keep scrolling. “It seems kind of constant, more or less,” Mike Stanford said.
And since young people don't have memories of a pre-9/11 world, they don't necessarily feel unsafe or afraid.
“It's hard not to feel safe in Mount Prospect,” Brooke Wilson said. “We don't know anything different.”
Even so, teachers say it is crucial to keep 9/11 from drifting into ancient history just because students today didn't live through it. The same has been true with previous generations born after other defining American moments such as Pearl Harbor or the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. “It's changed from a conversation to a lecture,” Cohen said. “Instead of just talking about the events, we're teaching them what happened because they may not know. And every year we're getting further away from it.”
“Being able to live through something is always different from just being told about it,” Judson agreed. “I just don't know if the newer generation will really get it.”