Commentary: How schools are remembering -- or forgetting -- Sept. 11

Jonathan Butcher, The Heritage Foundation on Sep 9, 2026

Published in Op Eds

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This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, yet lawmakers in just half of states require teaching about the terrorist event. This is an improvement over just three years ago, but lawmakers cannot afford to allow this remembrance to pass each year without making the event and its aftermath part of classroom instruction.

In 2023, Rep. Andrew Garbarino introduced a congressional resolution supporting a call to teachers in all 50 states to teach about the 2001 attacks. Garbarino, a New York Republican, and his co-sponsors noted that, at the time, policymakers in just 14 states required teaching about Sept. 11. Garbarino reintroduced the resolution last year.

Congress cannot direct school curriculum, but the resolution is welcome.

“You can’t promise to ‘Never Forget’ something you never knew,” Garbarino said in his statement from 2023. “The only way for us to keep our promise is to make sure the next generation and every generation of Americans after that is taught about that day, the losses, the stories of American heroism and unity, and the lasting ramifications."

This year, officials in only 25 states require teaching about Sept. 11. And some of the lessons are stronger than others. In Massachusetts, for example, state officials include Sept. 11 in the state’s social studies standards, but Gov. Maura Healey found it necessary to issue a statement on Sept. 11, 2025, calling for the event to be “fully incorporated into school curriculum frameworks.”

Fortunately, there are models to follow. Among the 25 states that require this teaching is Florida, where President George W. Bush was reading to a group of elementary school students on Sept. 11, 2001. Florida lawmakers require at least 45 minutes of instruction for middle school and high school students. State lawmakers even named Sept. 11 “Hero’s Day.”

In South Carolina, instruction on Sept. 11 is also required. The state’s public charter school authorizer (for which I serve on the board) is opening its meeting this month with a procession led by charter school students, followed by a color guard and a speech delivered by the district superintendent, who is a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve.

Early this month, Texas policymakers approved an update to the state social studies curriculum that teaches that the rise of radical Islam, terrorism and al-Qaida all led to the events of the fateful day. Officials in Idaho, Iowa and Louisiana are among those who have updated their teaching standards since 2022 and included material about Sept. 11.

These memorials are particularly important because of how education officials and media in some states redirect discussions away from heroism and national security. Houston Public Media, for example, said the new Texas lesson is an “anti-Islamic rewrite” of social studies lessons. California’s Department of Education provides a list of Sept. 11 resources for teachers that includes materials on the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II — a curious leap from “America was attacked by Islamic terrorists” to “here are ways America oppressed others when responding to a crisis during World War II.”

Prejudice deserves condemnation, but progressive education interests have a reputation for straying from the facts and editorializing about history. Teachers unions and the National Council for the Social Studies took a similar approach to lessons about America’s colonial era after the 2019 release of the New York Times Magazine’s "1619 Project." Suddenly America’s fight for independence was explained as a defense of chattel slavery. Historians thoroughly debunked this claim.

Likewise, leftist groups’ lessons on Sept. 11 manage to depart from stories of sacrifice in defense of our country to “responding to anti-Muslim bias.” Again, schools do not need to condone bias to teach that Islamism — the political ideology that all societies should be governed by Sharia law — is part of Sept. 11’s story.

The hard truth that some Islamic groups have wanted to destroy America for decades should not be ignored in classrooms due to a hazy preference for “tolerance.” It’s time for lawmakers in the remaining 25 states that do not require teaching about this day to teach students about the heroic sacrifices that terrorism forced during and after the terrible event.

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Jonathan Butcher is Acting Director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy, as well as its Will Skillman Senior Research Fellow in Education Policy.

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