It’s September 11. I saw a headline on the front page of a newspaper this morning remarking on “Six Years Later.” And I realized: that means my 7th graders were 6 years old. Their awareness of the world around them has existed only in a post-9/11 world. They will remember 9/11 the way I remember the Challenger: misty impressions of a terrible thing, of fire on TV, of upset adults.
And last night I helped a sophomore find a map of Russia. The first atlas we looked at was published in 1991, and the index said “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” I was possibly more politically aware during the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR than I am now — I remember 1991 very clearly. But it was before this girl was born. To her, the USSR is something from history class.
Time marches on…
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1 Jaime // Sep 11, 2007 at 7:59 pm
I had EXACTLY this sequence of thoughts today. challenger and all. Although I recall saying to Molly, as we stood on the walkway onto the Upper Green waiting for the chaplain to speak, for somebody to make sense of what was going on, “This is our JFK.” And now I wonder: which will it be? Though I was not alive when Kennedy was assassinated, it is still a historical landmark. And Challenger and Oklahoma City, which I was alive for, and which they were comparing 9/11 to on the radio this morning, have faded.
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