A moment of silence for 9/11 is now the law in New York schools

[conuly]

Shockingly, I don't support this. The fact that no public school students remember 9/11, and vanishingly few were even born then is, in my opinion, an unalloyed good. Time passes. All things fade. Well, except for the war. That's still here, but dwelling on 9/11 isn't going to make it go away any faster.

And it's not like the students will really contemplate the meaning of the occasion. They'll be thinking about their math homework they haven't finished, the cute kid they want to ask out, whether or not they'll get in trouble for checking their phone during this moment of silence. So why not just let them do that without the rigamarole?

Meanwhile, those students who were born in 2001 and graduated last June are old enough to fight in the ongoing war. A moment of silence for that loss of lives would not go amiss, but somehow I don't think anybody thinks that's what they should be discussing and contemplating at the start of every school year.

Comments

[author_by_night]

I was literally just thinking this, since my Facebook feed is still showing "never forget."

I mean, I guess I posted my thoughts, but they were more in the greater context of the changes I saw while I was in high school.

It was a terrible tragedy, I'm not discounting that, but... I feel like we're pushing this sense of nationalism through a tragedy caused by another group that felt they were better. Does no one see the destructive irony?