More than 100 million Americans alive today are too young to remember the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a generational shift that the National September 11 Memorial & Museum says has become the central challenge of preserving the day’s history a quarter-century later.
Students starting high school this fall were born more than a decade after the attacks. Many of their teachers may also have been too young to remember 9/11, or not yet born, according to the museum, which sits at the site of the former World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.
Since opening in 2014, the museum says more than 28 million visitors have passed through its doors. Inside, visitors see the names, faces and stories of the 2,977 victims killed that day, along with personal items such as business cards and wallets, and twisted steel recovered from the towers. People from more than 90 countries were among those killed on Sept. 11, 2001.
The museum also documents the response that followed, including neighbors raising flags in solidarity, volunteers arriving at Ground Zero to help, and schoolchildren visiting local firehouses in the days after the attacks.
Bringing 9/11 History to Classrooms Nationwide
Because not every student or teacher can travel to lower Manhattan, the museum has built student workshops, online programs, lesson plans and professional development opportunities aimed at helping educators teach the subject even without firsthand memory of the day.
Each summer, teachers from around the country travel to the museum to walk its floors, hear firsthand accounts from those who lived through the attacks, and work directly with museum experts. Some of the visiting teachers were in school themselves on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001; others weren’t yet born. They return home with materials intended to help them teach what museum staff describe as still-lived history.
As the country approaches the 25th anniversary of the attacks this year, the museum is encouraging Americans to learn about 9/11 and to pass along stories of the community response that followed the tragedy. The museum frames the effort as fulfilling the promise made in the attacks’ aftermath to never forget — a promise now being handed to a generation with no direct memory of the day.
Teachers looking for classroom resources can find tools through the museum’s website. Students can take part in the museum’s Anniversary Digital Learning Experience, which offers access to recorded videos and interviews with people who lived through the attacks.
