A wealthy Washington, D.C., suburb's public school district is advising teachers not to link 9/11 with radical Islam and to be sure to create "safe spaces" for Muslim students at the nation somberly marks the 25th anniversary of the terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans.The guardrails in a six-page instructional guide, titled "25th Anniversary and Commemoration of 9/11" and distributed to teachers, has prompted critics to accuse Fairfax County (Virginia) Public School's liberal leaders of coddling post-9/11 sensitivities rather than teaching history."It's sort of a vanilla way to do things," Retired Navy Vice Admiral Lou Crenshaw, who was stationed inside the Pentagon when al Qaeda terrorists crashed a hijacked passenger jet into the building."Everybody can go through the deal and feel good about it.
And at the end of the day, nobody complains.To me, that's not exactly what we need to do.
We need to make sure that the kids have learned a lesson here.And that's not going to happen if we try to shave the facts to the point where it's hard to figure out what we're talking about."A digital content analysis reveals that about half of the 1,740-word document is devoted to tips for creating "safe spaces for Muslim and Middle Eastern students," about 15% spells out specific 9/11 instruction and the rest of the document tip-toes around managing "emotional responses" to the lesson.In northern Virginia, Fairfax County Public Schools distributes a guide for 9/11 lessons, with a list of "Do"s and "Don't"s.
(Fairfax County Public Schools)The guide by the school district, which sits only a few miles from the Pentagon and several military bases, mentions military families only three times and first responders only once, saying at one point: "Many families of military personnel and first responders experienced loss and hardship."Meanwhile, it has 30 references to Islam, "Muslim families," "Muslim students," "anti-Muslim racism," "anti-Middle Eastern" rhetoric, "Islamo...