9/11 History Teaching

While there is hard work in Eastern Europe to establish critical and nuanced history textbooks, history textbooks in the United States face another challenge as new 2005 versions are surfacing. These textbooks face the politically charged subject of the terrorist attacks in 2001, in short: 9/11.
Not necessarily a matter of history and identity, teaching about 9/11 does question the American superpower at the heart of its role in the world. A simple analysis of the five most widely used textbooks in the United States show the present variation of explanations. All the authors of these new sections explain follow the same explanation of who Osama Bin Laden is. Most textbooks then halt at the assumption that bin Laden’s success lies in the high levels of poverty in Muslim Communities. Only the very successful Give Me Liberty textbook on American History by Eric Foner connects bin Laden’s opposition to global U.S.-policies to the homeland politics of the Bush Administration and puts forward the question: What is the proper balance between liberty and security? He does not analyse 9/11 as a singular happening, but rather as another phase in American History as he connects the dots from the Civil War, the World Wars to the persecution of German-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Communists and now, terrorists. All of these periods are characterised as federal efforts to limit civil liberties.
9/11, however, remains very recent history, while most schools are working with outdated textbooks and while most teacher’s do not even manage to get to 2001 in their curriculum. Still, it is hopeful that history teaching about terrorism and United States policy can be critical and can overcome conservative opinions that teaching America’s weaknesses is betrayal.

Source: History News Network, George Mason University.