All Bets Are Off - 3/11/2002

Kids and 9.11
By Jon, Conval High School

Today is the six-month anniversary of the attacks on America on September 11, as you probably already knew. We were all truly touched by those events, but how much did parents tell their small children about it and how much did they here at school? For months the 9.11 attacks were the only news people talked about, so word got around fast to kids whose parents did not tell them enough information. Everyone, including kids, should have been informed about the terrorist attacks, but not all of them were. By now pretty much everybody knows about the attacks, but how much do the kids know, and is what they think they know factual? I can not speak for every child in America, but I can tell you about the kids I have seen and how much they know about the September 11 attacks. 

Today I was at the orthodontist waiting for my appointment. I sat there watching these kids, probably between 7-10 years old, building structures out of Lego blocks in the corner. There were four of them, two boys who were brothers and two girls who were neither related to each other or the boys. The older of the two boys, probably nine years old, built as tall a tower as he could out of the blocks that he had. His brother seemed to also be constructing a tower. One of the girls was sitting next to the table picking out blocks for the older boy to use and the other girl had not come over yet. The older boy put one last block on the top of his tower and sat back. "Look, it's the twin towers," he said, "They're standing again." When he said this I started listening more diligently, for I knew that what he said would make a good topic for an article. His younger brother looked up and said, "You copied my idea. I was making the twin towers." I sat there looking at these two boys and wondered how much they really knew about the World Trade Center attacks. 

Then the other girl came over and started building something. As she came over the older boy said, "Look at my twin towers. Cool, huh?" The girl replied by saying, "Now are you going to knock it over?" All this time I was sitting there stunned that they were playing games reenacting the attacks six months ago. At that point the girl that had been there the whole time looked up and said, "You shouldn't joke about that. It's terrorism." After that the older boy said, "Yeah, thousands of people died." His brother followed him up with this statement: "Five thousand three hundred twenty four thousand eighty two hundred and three thousand an ten minus fifteen people died." The other three kids just sat there, thinking that was a totally legitimate number. Finally his older brother said, "There is no minus," and his brother's response was, "but some of the people survived and didn't die." At that point one of the girls had to leave, but the others just continued playing like nothing had happened. They were believed every word that was said there and they agreed with all of the facts they had exchanged. All through their little conversation the two boys had been knocking down their towers and making explosion noises, then setting them back up and doing it again. Other than that one girls comment, they did not seem to care about the September 11 attacks and joked around, pretending they were killing small action figures that were falling from the towers. 

While listening to the four kids talking, one of them, the girl that was there all along, seemed to know the most about 9.11 and had the most respect for the deaths. The other girl did not seem to know anything about it because she did not make one comment the entire time. The boys of course thought they knew a lot about it, but did not have the right information, and didn't have any respect for the tragic events. This just goes to show you the diversity of knowledge that kids have of the attacks and how parents and teachers should be telling them more about it so that they know the true story of that day. If a parent did not want their child to know about the attacks on 9.11, they did not do much by not telling them. The kids probably just heard about it from their friends, who are not always good resources of information. I think that the children of America should be informed of the attacks of that day and the effects they made on our lives. 

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