To young students, 9/11 is simply history

A plane slicing through a silver tower, bursting into a fireball. Smoke rising from a blackened ditch at the edge of a grassy field. The side of a government building lying in ruins.

These are the images that have been seared into the memories of many Americans on a day when the eyes of the world were directed at the twin towers in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. and a field in Shanksville, Penn.

However, Airen Fortunato has no recollection of any image broadcast during the nonstop news coverage on Sept. 11, 2001.

The reason is simple: Airen, 10, was not yet born.

Sitting inside a small conference room at Santa Rosa Elementary School on the 12th anniversary of Sept. 11, Airen, a fifth-grader, explained his understanding of 9/11 as if reciting a history book or a lesson learned in class.

“People from different countries around Asia got on planes hijacked and hit places,” he said. Airen can list those places, too: “The Pentagon, the two twin towers in New York and one (plane) that failed to hit anything and landed in Pennsylvania.”

For kids like Airen, who were not yet alive on that tragic day, 9/11 is merely history – a story learned from a book, a teacher or a parent. Airen’s mom, Karen Fortunato, who sat near her son in the conference room, explained this.

“It’s no different from – like him – watching World War I and World War II stuff,” she said, referring to her son’s interest in wars of long ago. “I’m sure it was the same reaction back then seeing pictures.”

At a school assembly held inside the cafeteria Wednesday, students learned about Sept. 11 during a slideshow presentation featuring images of the 2001 event.

Photos of firefighters and burning buildings were shown to a soundtrack of songs including Green Day’s “Wake Me Up When September Ends” and Blessid Union of Souls’ “I Believe.” Some adults in the audience wiped tears from their eyes. The young students’ reactions weren’t quite as emotional. Many just stared or wriggled in place, unable to concentrate.

Fifth-grader Matthew Roman, 10, was in the audience. He already knew some things about Sept. 11.

“9/11 is whenever the twin towers collapsed and a plane crashed and a lot of people died because of that,” he said. He learned this information from his teacher and overhearing his older sister “talk about it that one time.”

Matthew did, however, take away one new factoid from the presentation.

“I think about a thousand people died,” he said.

Teaching students about what happened on 9/11 is about making them aware of history and the importance of remembering the people who lost their lives that day, said Santa Rosa’s principal Eva Safraneck. Because of the graphic nature of Sept. 11, however, there is a boundary teachers must stay within.

“How do you present kids without scaring them, but still make them aware of what happened?” she said.

The slideshow presentation featured images that weren’t “too graphic,” Safraneck said. And there was a “positive spin” at the end of the slideshow, which showed the new Freedom Tower standing among the 9/11 memorial in New York City. The images of this new building rising from the ashes are part of an overall lesson.

“We take this event, as horrible as it was for us, and we have made something positive,” she said. “We have a memorial. We have days like this when we remember 9/11 and we remember people who were lost that day.”

***ADVERTISEMENT***Matthew’s mom, Yvonne, said she did see some students get emotional during the presentation and thought it was good how they weren’t embarrassed to show those emotions.

She also agreed it’s important for youngsters to learn about Sept. 11.

“That’s going to be in their history book, or if it’s not already,” she said. “That’s history. It’s going to be talked about.”

The 35-year-old added: “I don’t think I lived through any major history until that.”

One man who spoke at the assembly lived through many historic events. In speaking with InMaricopa.com, Richard Hall, a VFW member who served in the Vietnam War, mentioned another event in American history that some would say has a resemblance to Sept. 11.

“There were actually more people killed in 9/11 that were totally, totally innocent than there were in Pearl Harbor,” he said.

Hall was born in 1946, about five years after the Empire of Japan attacked the U.S. military base in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941.

He said he was taught about what happened at Pearl Harbor by his parents, aunts and uncles. But there was one other place he learned about that tragic day.

“In school, they taught us,” he said.