• abc [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Yes lol. Mind you school started at 7:45, so we’d literally be like an hour into first period and it’d just come over the intercom but every one of the 3 schools (and these were separate middle/high schools. So like X North Middle/X South Middle/X East Middle and X North High/X South High/X East High all under the same district) in my school district did this shit.

    It was:

    • An announcement for the first plane hitting the towers. Moment of silence
    • An announcement for the second plane. Moment of silence
    • An announcement for when the first tower fell. Moment of silence
    • An announcement for when the second tower fell. Moment of silence

    No idea whose idea it was but we did this every year from like 6th grade to 12th & it was never really talked about in the community at large lol. Half the time, teachers would either just continue teaching through the moments of silence or get really irate at students who didn’t take it seriously. I experienced both over the years and senior year was when I was politically aware enough to realize how fucking stupid it was in general. Still one of those things though that is so clearly politically motivated that I didn’t even get in trouble for saying what I said - just yelled at by a chud whose coffee breath is still stuck in my memory - they were that close to me, for like 30 minutes in the hallway about how 2,977 people died and how it was disrespectful to laugh & call the announcements and moments of silence ridiculous (even though most of my classmates, even those who weren’t politically engaged or outright conservative, were of the same mind that it was pointless and dumb lol)

    • 4am@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Even in the Murica manga no one stops to mourn the pentagon lol

    • Water Bowl Slime
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      1 year ago

      That’s really, really funny oh my god. At least your school district had the restraint to not force a moment of silence for the Pentagon too… or did they? 😂

    • jasondj@ttrpg.network
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      1 year ago

      To be honest this would be an incredible lesson one day, or even half day, in high school, once every 4 years or so.

      Not just moments of silence though…I mean every kid circled around every television-cart they could find, watching the real-time footage. Do a phone-check, too. Most people didn’t have mobile internet in 2001 (I did…it was slow as hell on some Ericsson bar phone…had a headset for it that was also an FM radio tuner. Found it on eBay. I was a nerd. And still am.)

      My high school still has teachers working at it that we’re teaching there in 2001. There’s even a few kids I went to school with teaching there now. I’m sure they could piece together a full-scale reenactment of the day from memory.

      • quarrk [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        What lesson would kids gain from that which they don’t already know intuitively? Kids don’t need to be taught that senseless death is sad. The purpose of such an activity would be indoctrinating a sense of persecution in the citizens of the country with the most powerful military which has caused magnitudes more suffering than this individual event. Especially if you leave out the 20-year response by that same military to the event.

        • Water Bowl Slime
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          1 year ago

          Kids can follow up that lesson with some Iraq war roleplay. One team of children gets to play as the US military and the other gets to be Iraqi civilians. They can finish the lesson once they play-execute Osama Bin Laden lol