For Gen Z, First Memories of 9/11 Often Came From Families and Teachers

Avery Black, a 20-year-old journalism student at the University of South Carolina, said she first heard about 9/11 during elementary school and later asked her mother to explain what had happened.

“She just started telling me where she was the day it happened, and just broke down in tears, explaining to me about all the firefighters that went in and never came out,” Black recalled.

Black said she did not fully grasp the significance of that day as a child, although several details remain vivid in her memory.

She remembers most clearly the “falling man”—the widely known photograph of a man falling from the North Tower. A native of Dallas, Texas, she also recalls teachers showing footage of then-President George W. Bush learning about the attacks at an elementary school event.

For Annie Erickson, 26, who grew up in North Carolina, personal stories shaped her earliest memories of 9/11 more than classroom lessons or news reports.

“My mother grew up in New York City, so I remember my mom telling me about 9/11 and talking about how someone that lived in her building, who she was friends with, passed away in the towers,” Erickson said.

Erickson was also struck to learn at school that 9/11 was one of the few historical events teachers could connect to their own memories.

There is currently no national requirement for US schools to teach students about the attacks, and expectations differ substantially by state. A recent Associated Press analysis found that 25 states require or expect public schools to cover 9/11, while 13 make instruction optional.

However, some states that mandate instruction do not prescribe a specific curriculum.

Allegra Tashjian, who grew up in Wisconsin, said her teacher described 9/11 as an important and somber day when she was in first or second grade and asked whether anyone knew why. After a student answered that planes had struck the towers in New York, Tashjian wondered why she had never heard of the event before.

At home, she remembers finding her mother folding laundry and asking whether she knew about the planes crashing in New York. “I remember she kind of paused folding her laundry and was like, ‘um no, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything about that,’” said Tashjian, now a 28-year-old PhD student.

“For whatever reason at that point, I guess she really didn’t want to talk about it.”

Tashjian, Erickson, Black and several other members of Gen Z told the BBC that they learned some details about the attacks in school and from their families. But it was through their own research that they gained a fuller understanding of what happened that day.

“I really understood the gravity of it more from reading things on the internet when I was probably between like nine and 12,” Tashjian said.

Black initially did not understand that the attacks were acts of terrorism. “That was the part that I wasn’t really taught until I did my own research. It’s really hard to explain what a terrorist is to a child.”

David Schanzer, a professor at Duke University who teaches “9/11 & Its Aftermath,” wrote this week in a campus magazine that interest in the attacks remains strong generations later. His course is full, with dozens of students on the waiting list.

“Ten years ago, I thought student interest was ebbing and I would need to find something else to teach about,” he said.

Schanzer said current world events have only increased young people’s curiosity about the attacks 25 years ago.

“If you want to understand what has gone wrong over the past couple of decades it makes sense to learn about 9/11, the first global catastrophe of the 21st century (the others being the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic),” he wrote.

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