NYC Invests in Educating Students on 9/11 Terror Attacks
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What happened
The New York City Council is allocating $1 million toward educating students about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, in which hijackers crashed passenger planes into the World Trade Center and other targets, killing nearly 3,000 people. Much of the funding will provide scholarships for city eighth-graders to visit the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, located on the site of the destroyed Twin Towers. Council Speaker Julie Menin said the initiative is intended to ensure younger New Yorkers who did not experience the attacks understand what happened, including the lives lost, first-responder heroism, and rebuilding. The allocation comes as the 25th anniversary of the attacks approaches.
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Right-leaning coverage names who carried out the attacks and what City Council leaders say the museum visits should teach. Left-leaning coverage does not. Left-leaning coverage, via the Washington Post, says lawmakers want students to "know about the terrorist attacks." It reports only that eighth-graders will go to the memorial. Right-leaning coverage is more complete on the same program, adding that the money is largely museum scholarships and that Speaker Julie Menin framed the trips around heroism, lost loved ones, and rebuilding. It also identifies Al-Qaeda as the group that flew passenger planes into the Twin Towers. Right-leaning coverage puts the death toll near 3,000.
Word choice splits on the attackers. Left-leaning coverage never names an ideology. Right-leaning coverage calls the perpetrators "radical Islamic terrorists."
What share of the city's eighth grade will the appropriation actually reach, and what do New York schools already teach about that day?
Bottom line
If you read only the Washington Post, New York's $1 million is just a memorial trip. Daily Wire names Al-Qaeda and a death toll near 3,000 as what students are meant to learn.
The receipts — 5 facts one side's coverage lacks
- Al-Qaeda terrorists crashed two passenger planes into the Twin Towers
- Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks
- Council Speaker Julie Menin said the initiative should make the next generation aware of 9/11 heroism, lost loved ones, and rebuilding
- The Texas State Board of Education is moving to approve standards requiring students to identify the 9/11 attacks as motivated by radical Islam
- Proposed Texas standards would teach Prophet Mohammed's brutal military campaigns against Jewish and Christian tribes, the normalization of slavery, and the taking of female captives as harem slaves
The Left View
The Washington Post presents the allocation as a civic education and remembrance program, reporting that city lawmakers approved the money to send eighth-graders to the 9/11 memorial because they 'want to make sure students know about the terrorist attacks.' The coverage treats the story as getting students to the memorial so they learn what happened.
The Right View
The Daily Wire calls the allocation a 'major investment' so younger people understand that 'radical Islamic terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people,' and names Al-Qaeda as the group that crashed two planes into the Twin Towers. It highlights Menin's focus on first-responder heroism, a felt 'unity,' and 'what the terrorists tried to take away from our city and our country,' plus her call that September 11 remain something to 'always remember and to never forget.'
Our Take (balanced)
The left's strongest argument is that this is civic remembrance: lawmakers funded memorial visits so students 'know about the terrorist attacks,' and Menin defined the aim as awareness of what happened, the dead, heroism, and rebuilding. The right's strongest argument is that the same history is incomplete unless students are told the attackers were 'radical Islamic terrorists' from Al-Qaeda and what they 'tried to take away from our city and our country'—language the Daily Wire treats as essential to the lesson. The central unresolved tension is whether 9/11 schooling succeeds as a commemorative encounter with loss and heroism, or whether it fails unless it also explicitly names Islamist ideology as the attacks' motive.
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