How 9/11 is taught in US schools depends on where students live

Key points

• States take different approaches to teaching 9/11
• Some require lessons, while others only recommend them
• Several states require commemorations in schools

Twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks, American students are still learning about the event very differently depending on where they go to school.

An Associated Press review of all 50 states found no single nationwide approach to teaching 9/11. Some states explicitly require the attacks and their aftermath to be covered in public-school history or social studies courses. Others recommend the subject or leave the decision largely to individual schools and districts.

The differences are significant because today's schoolchildren were all born after the attacks. Even many teachers are too young to have clear memories of September 11, 2001, when al-Qaeda hijackers seized four passenger planes, killing nearly 3,000 people in New York, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania.

States including Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa and West Virginia have specific requirements that ensure students encounter 9/11 in lessons. Florida, for example, requires at least 45 minutes of annual 9/11 instruction in certain middle and high school classes.

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Alaska, Vermont, Washington and Montana have no statewide requirement specifically mandating 9/11 instruction. Schools may still teach the attacks as part of broader lessons on US history, terrorism, foreign policy or national security.

Where 9/11 is taught, students are often expected to learn much more than what happened that morning.

State standards can include the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Patriot Act, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, terrorism and debates over national security and civil liberties.

New York, where the World Trade Centre was attacked, expects students at different grade levels to examine the attacks and their consequences. Older students study issues including government surveillance, the war on terror and controversial US policies that followed.

Virginia, where American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon, also requires the subject in middle and upper grades, while Pennsylvania provides schools with an optional 9/11 teaching toolkit.

Some states separately require or encourage schools to commemorate September 11, even where classroom instruction is not mandatory. New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin are among states with laws providing for moments of silence or other observances.