Dyson College of Arts and Sciences
Issue link: http://dysoncollege.uberflip.com/i/128987
Teachers and schools of Education must also be concerned by what Stanford University's William Damon calls: "…the unfortunate lack of understanding by today's schoolchildren about the world beyond their own intimate circles of friends and family. Their ignorance most notably includes an almost complete lack of awareness about how rare their most prized possession, freedom, is in large parts of the world. Nor do they have much appreciation of what freedom means for a civic and political life that deals with matters more serious than recreational choices. Indeed, young people in our country know practically nothing about national or global politics, and they care even less. By the end of the twentieth century, social scientists and educators were beginning to express concern about the troublesome know-nothingism that had spread among the ranks of American youth." (Damon, 2011) 9/11 Impact on K-12 Schools and the Implications for Schools of Education "The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 5, March 21, 1778 Beyond the esoteric concerns, 9/11 continues to have discernible and lasting implications for practical budgetary, supervisory, school community, and curricular evolutions which schools of education are intimately connected to by necessity in their preparation of future teachers and administrators. Even before 9/11, the tragic circumstances in Columbine (Colorado) High School changed the mind-set and dynamics of school administration in a most profound way. Security, preparedness, and resultant procedures took on new urgency as communities around the country clamored for more stringent security protocols. 9/11 awakened us from our intramural perspectives to consider the global consequences of our lackadaisical attitudes toward world affairs and our mistaken belief that threats to our security were limited to internal matters. Just as isolated and bullied individual students in local communities attempt to even scores for past slights in a flourish of angry and violent outbursts, we now were forced to confront powerful international conspiracies of angry terrorists capable of mass murder on a level we have never contemplated before. For educators the lessons of 9/11 were clearly that local networks needed strengthening, regional networks needed greater coordination and funding and education needed to address the failure to anticipate and respond to the messages of alienation and lessons of history we avoided locally and from around the world. The Pace University School of Education, housed in the former shadow of Ground Zero, is particularly sensitive to this new era of high security and additional curricular demands in the preparation of teachers. For schools in the first decade of the 21st century, the impact of 9/11 had a lasting effect on what teachers have come to know as "Full Plate Syndrome" (Kralovec, 2003), the notion that in addition to the already significant and increasing responsibilities of the modern teacher, 9/11 outcomes added a host of new issues and concerns to an already overwhelming set of requirements. This new set of policies and procedures came at a particularly difficult and demanding time for teachers, administrators, and schools of education, as accountability standards imposed by No Child Left Behind and diminishing resources were further impacted by overall reductions in national, state, and local budgets that shifted priorities to expensive security concerns. Schools were required to reallocate budgets to tighten security with more administrative staff, the installation of expensive monitoring devices, identification credentials and restricted access to once open environments. Drills once limited to concerns about fire were now extended to include lockdowns and lockouts from intruders, secret codes, and in the case of Westchester County schools, mass evacuation drills to account for an 68