To the editor:
Honoring September 11means more than a moment of silence. It means acknowledging plainly what happened that day, why it happened and the terror deliberately inflicted on thousands of innocent people. That acknowledgment cannot be optional if we want our children to understand history rather than simply observe it.
I read Superintendent John Robidoux’s message to the school community with genuine appreciation for the moment of silence he organized and his call for kindness and empathy. But one word was conspicuously absent: terrorism. His letter described our collective reaction as “anger, frustration, disbelief and immense sadness,” without ever naming what caused it. Nearly 3,000 people did not lose their lives to some unnamed catastrophe, as though we had simply suffered a mass outbreak of heart attacks that morning. They were murdered in a premeditated act of terrorism. Describing the day only by the emotions it produced, while omitting its cause, risks turning one of the defining atrocities of our lifetime into something vague and unaccountable.
I was in New York City that day, not far from the World Trade Center, and I remember how disorienting and frightening those hours were. I don’t doubt the superintendent’s sincerity in wanting to promote kindness. But genuine empathy for the victims, and for everyone who lived through that morning, starts with telling the truth about what was done to them.
This is also the first generation of students with no living memory of September 11 anywhere in this country. That makes context more urgent, not less. If our schools do not explicitly teach what happened, why it happened and who was responsible, we risk raising children for whom 9/11 is just a date attached to vague, unexplained sadness.
Marblehead can hold both truths at once: teaching compassion as a value for the future, and teaching history honestly. Remembering September 11th with integrity means acknowledging, clearly and without euphemism, what happened, why it happened and the terror inflicted on innocent people. Our children deserve nothing less.
Nyla DuBois
Green Street
