Group honors curricula that explore 9/11's 'root causes'

Yahoo News ^ | 9/9/2004 | Greg Toppo

[ezfindit]

Call it the Chips Ahoy! School of International Studies: Fifth-graders at Fratney Street School in Milwaukee learn about causes of terrorism with a small bag of cookies and a large map of the world.

Bob Peterson teaches students that overpopulation and poverty help make it easier to recruit terrorists for attacks like those on Sept. 11, 2001.

Schools have been teaching about Sept. 11 since that morning nearly three years ago, but this year, Families of September 11, founded by victims' relatives, is honoring Peterson and three others for curricula on terrorism's root causes. At a Smithsonian Institution conference today, the group will issue guidelines for educators.

In one of Peterson's lessons, students stand, arranged by population, on a huge world map. Peterson hands out cookies according to gross national products: The 16 students in Asia each get one cookie, and the three in Africa split half a cookie among them. In North America, one student enjoys eight cookies.

Though he doesn't “blame America” for the attacks, Peterson says, even children “can be encouraged to ask deep questions” about the causes of terrorism.

Opponents say that runs the risk of creating empathy for terrorists. Teachers must ensure “that students aren't taking away an overly simplistic view of why terrorism happens,” says Kathleen Porter-Magee of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a think tank that has pushed for more rigorous history curricula. Though students might understand its causes, she says, terrorism is irrational.

But saying the perpetrators were simply evil or insane is terrifying, says Families of September 11 president Mary Ellen Salamone, whose husband died in the World Trade Center. “I don't think it's helpful for children to think this … happened for no reason.”

[ezfindit]

Mao would be proud! So the indoctrination continues. Let's brainwash the 5th graders so they start blaming America for everything as early as possible. Gee do you think that may eventually lead to terrorism? Maybe the environmentalist terrorists and the radical PETA supporters were nurtured precisely by these kind of insane professors. One wonders!

[wideawake]

I have literally had it up to here with the 9/11 family groups.

I guess if we had given a million bucks to each family of the OKC bombing victims, the OKC families would be applauding teachers who sympathize with poor little Timmy McVeigh.

[untenured]

Bob Peterson teaches students that overpopulation and poverty help make it easier to recruit terrorists for attacks like those on Sept. 11, 2001.

Saudi Arabia is both wealthy and thinly populated. But why let that stand in the way of a good story?

[twigs]

even children “can be encouraged to ask deep questions”

Sorry. Fifth graders don't ask deep questions. At that age, they memorize well and can be lead into some discussion, but it won't be deep.

Thomas Jefferson said it best: There is a certain period of life, say from eight to fifteen or sixteen years of age, when the mind, like the body, is not yet firm enough for laborious and close operations. If applied to such, it falls an early victim to premature exertion; exhibiting indeed at first, in these young and tender subjects, the flattering appearance of their being men while they are yet children, but ending in reducing them to be children when they should be men.

[ezfindit]

Precisely! Facts to a liberal are like holy water to a demon.

[stremba]

And the leader of the terrorist group that attacked us is a billionaire. Those pesky facts!!!

[silversky]

Bump

[ezfindit]

Here's another "course" that attempts to help college students to "understand" 9/11.

"Each of us lived through the tragic events of 9/11/01. Given the magnitude of the impact and implications of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last year, it is natural and important to seek to understand why they happened and what lessons for the future they might teach us."
http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/%7Emes491n/Administration/overview.html


Here's a quick summary for Prof. Mednicoff. How about this for a LESSON in REALITY: "A billionaire Radical Islamic Terrorist funded a groupd of middle-class Extremist Islamic murderers, who slaughtered and destroyed approximately 3,000 innocent men, women and children out of an insane, rabid, unjustified, and misdirected HATE." Course over!

[Moleman]

Does anyone have contact info for this kook, the school board or others? They are in need of a freep.

[Angry Enough]

So, following this logic, I have a question for Gloria Steinem and other "feminists." (I use the quotation marks because I believe true feminism has been dead for some time.) If an attractive woman walks by a sexually frustrated man day after day, he is therefore justified (or at least we try to 'understand' his frustration) in the act of rape. Does that about sum up the reasoning?

[searchandrecovery]

9/11's 'root causes'

My own investigation has pointed to the Koran and Suadi Arabia.