Monuments have been erected to the dead. Stories have been told and retold of fathers and mothers who went to work that morning and never came home. From the final, tragic moments of so many lost souls. Heroes that should never be forgotten. For those who were alive when the terrorist attacks occurred, a defining moment for the nation is etched in memory. But for generations who never lived through the heady days of 9/11, the terrorist attacks are now part of the country’s history, an event that happened long before they were born. Now, more than two decades after 19 militant Islamic extremists hijacked four airliners and targeted New York City and the nation’s capital, killing nearly 3,000 people, lawmakers in New Jersey are seeking to make 9/11 required teaching in the state’s schools . The bill, S-713, would authorize school districts to teach about the events of September 11, 2001, in the curriculum of all elementary, middle and high school students. It would also require every public school to hold an annual 9/11 commemoration. “If you think back to when it happened, we all said we’ll never forget and we should never forget,” said state Sen. Richard Codey, D-Essex, one of the measure’s sponsors. Despite passing the Senate unanimously last March, the bill until last week appeared to face an uncertain future in the Assembly — where a companion bill sponsored by two freshman Republicans in the Democratic-controlled chamber, A-3877, was bottled up in the Education Committee for months. Or so it seemed. But after being asked why the legislation had been sidelined for so long, a spokeswoman for Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin said Thursday that the Senate bill was in fact under consideration and that “the Assembly will ensure that school districts are required to teach the events that lead even after the terrorist attacks of September 11”.

A DAY TO REMEMBER

A study last year by the Pew Research Center found that an overwhelming percentage of Americans know where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. “For most who are old enough to remember, it is a day that is impossible to forget,” the study said. But he said an ever-increasing number of Americans have no personal memory of that day, either because they were too young or because they hadn’t been born yet. Mourners pause at the North Reflecting Pool as flowers are placed in the names of the dead at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York.AP The bill being considered by the New Jersey Legislature would require school districts to teach about the events of September 11, 2001 in the curriculum of all elementary, middle and high school students. Schools should teach the historical context of the attacks, provide a timeline of the day as the events unfolded, and detail the actions of police, firefighters, paramedics and other first responders to rescue and recover victims. Codey said he still remembers being told stories about World War II when he was young. “That stayed with me forever,” he said. “Kids need to understand what that day meant, not just for the state, but for the entire country. We must never forget who we may have lost that day. It is important for them that we remember them as heroes.” Some New Jersey school districts already spend class time studying the events of 9/11, but what is taught varies from district to district. The state Department of Education is forcing some discussion about the attacks on social studies studies in the upper grades. Those standards include how the attacks contributed to the national security and civil liberties debate, and their impact on decisions about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but not to the extent suggested by the pending legislation. Although it’s not officially included in the district’s curriculum, Emerson Schools Superintendent Brian P. Gates said terrorist attacks and their aftermath are commonly discussed in social studies classes. “It’s not every teacher, every grade level, every class — but where it’s appropriate, where it fits,” she explained. These lessons also speak to national unity in the wake of the terrorist attack, which Pew’s 9/11 20th Anniversary Report found changed US public opinion. “It is hard to think of an event that so profoundly transformed US public opinion in so many dimensions as the 9/11 attacks. While Americans had a shared sense of anguish after 9/11, the months that followed were also marked by a rare spirit of public unity,” the report said, though it said many of those effects were short-lived. THE FACES OF THE NEW JERSEY VICTIMS OF 9/11 A daily reminder of what happened that day can be seen in a glass case at Emerson High School, just outside the library, where a piece of steel from the wreckage of the fallen World Trade Center is on display. A K-12 district, the Bergen County community is just a 20-mile drive from where the Twin Towers once stood. Nearly 150 county residents perished in the attacks, including Gary Albero of Emerson. “We definitely want our teachers to think about that day,” Gatens said. But he also acknowledged that it’s a day that recedes deeper into the past with each new grade that enters the school system. “We don’t have a single student in the district that was close to being born when 9/11 happened,” Gatens said. In Paterson, the city’s school district also does not have an official 9/11 curriculum, but like Emerson, it provides a variety of “age-appropriate resources and lesson plan suggestions for teachers” to help educate students. students, according to Paul Brubaker, the school district. representative. “For students in kindergarten through second grade, lessons focus on the heroism shown by so many on 9/11 and give students opportunities to define heroism for themselves by identifying the everyday heroes in their lives,” she said. Students in grades three through eight are taught not only about the events of 9/11, but study how the day affected people’s sense of safety. And high school students delve into more complex concepts like terrorism and counterterrorism and the question of how to balance national security with protecting individuals’ civil liberties, Brubaker explained. Jack Simon, left, sophomore, places flags while Alan Leon, sophomore, drills holes for the flags as part of Cedar Grove’s 9/11 Memorial flag installation Friday. Julian Leshay | For NJ Advance M Colleen Tambuscio witnessed what happened on 9/11. He was working with an educational institution in Manhattan at the time and could see the devastation unfolding as he exited the PATH train station at 33rd Street. She spent the night on the town with a friend because there was no way she could get back home to New Jersey. She is now a teacher at New Milford High School and helped write a sample 9/11 curriculum several years ago that she developed with the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education in conjunction with the National 9/11 Memorial & Museum. “I like to focus on the personal narratives, either of survivors or bereaved family members. I feel like that’s what students really latch on to, the personal stories that tie into history,” she said. The Chathams School District, where many children lost their parents on Sept. 11, is observing the date and also teaching lessons about the attacks, Superintendent Michael LaSousa said. Steve Maher, the district’s superintendent of social studies, said last year’s 20th anniversary was marked by age-appropriate lessons for students from elementary through high school. Younger students read “14 Cows for America,” a 2008 book by Carmen Agra Deedy, the true story of a Stanford University student, Kimeli Naiyomah, who witnessed the devastating events while visiting United Nations headquarters in New York and traveled home to his remote village in Western Kenya to tell a story that “burned a hole in his heart.” They responded by presenting the United States with the most solemn gift the Maasai people could give – a herd of cows. Those in grades 4 to 6 discussed how nearly 7,000 airline passengers diverted after the attacks were welcomed to Gander, Newfoundland. And the high school students focused on the Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville, Pa., and discussed how it captures the anger and fear from that day while celebrating the bravery of ordinary Americans. FDNY firefighters search the wreckage of the towers on September 11, 2001. Aristides Economopoulos / The Star-Ledger This year, a firefighter who served as the site of the World Trade Center will discuss his experiences with 8th graders and high school students, according to Maher. “His view highlights how the attack erased the differences between people as everyone in the region came together in their efforts to rescue the victims and comfort their families. “His memory of how people came together at that time can be a good message for students today to hear,” Maher said.

BLANK EXPRESSIONS

John Farmer, Jr., who was New Jersey’s attorney general on Sept. 11, 2001, and later served as a senior adviser to the 9/11 Commission, said he was not a big fan of legislated curricula. But at the same time, he couldn’t imagine a course in American history that would leave out the events of 9/11. “The equivalent would be leaving out Pearl Harbor when I was young,” he said. Now a Rutgers University law professor and director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers, Farmer said one of the overwhelming moments at the beginning of each school year is the realization that many college and law students were not yet born on 9/11. , and faces similar issues of identifying events that are lost to time each semester. “Early in…